INDIANAPOLIS -- At the very back of the garage area, they were preparing not for the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard but to go home. Crewmen disassembled rear wings and returned the parts to NASCAR officials. Chairs and hero card holders were moved, transporter lifts were lowered, cars were loaded up. And then, the most incongruous sight of all -- Bill Elliott, clad in not a firesuit but a golf shirt and jeans, stopping to sign a few autographs before moving on.

“

I don't even want to talk about it right now, to be honest with you. I might say something I don't need to.

”

EDDIE WOOD

Four cars were sent home from Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Saturday, and only one of them was from a full-time Sprint Cup organization. The proud, venerable, but fallen-upon-hard-times Wood Brothers, with Elliott behind the wheel, were knocked out of the Brickyard field when Petty Enterprises fill-in driver Terry Labonte was forced to use the past champion's provisional. Two adjacent stalls in the garage area told the story: the No. 45, full of crewmen working on a racecar, and the No. 21, empty.

It was a bitter moment for a 55-year-old Wood Brothers franchise that's suffered through too many of them already. Elliott, the 2002 Brickyard champion, came to Indianapolis as one of only five drivers to have competed in all 14 previous NASCAR events at the historic 2.5-mile venue. And Saturday brought back painful memories of February, when the Woods missed their first Daytona 500 since 1960 after Kurt Busch -- whose points from the previous year had been transferred to rookie teammate Sam Hornish Jr. -- suffered a failure in a qualifying race and needed the past champion's spot.

Team co-owner Eddie Wood couldn't hide his disappointment. "I don't even want to talk about it right now, to be honest with you," he said. "I might say something I don't need to."

Elliott was 19th-fastest in the weekend's first practice on Friday, but turned only five laps in the session. He made 10 more in second practice, but dropped to 39th-fastest. His qualifying speed of 175.552 mph ranked 41st, and was slower than those turned in by J.J. Yeley, Joe Nemechek, Scott Riggs. A.J. Allmendinger and Marcos Ambrose -- all drivers also outside of the top 35 in owner points, and who had to make the race on speed.

"We just fought everything," Elliott said. "It's just a bad deal with the way we ended up. I don't know. I think these guys have got a lot of good ideas, but until you go test and figure some of this stuff out, it's just hard to unload. We lost 30 minutes of practice [Friday], and sometimes you're better off not to know. Just go."

Kyle Petty, whose six-race stint as a television analyst ended in the most recent Sprint Cup event, had originally been scheduled to return at Indianapolis. But the team announced earlier this week that Labonte, the 1996 series champion, would be in the No. 45 car at the Brickyard to ensure it appeared in one of the sport's biggest events. That left Elliott, the 1988 champion, on the outside looking in after his qualifying lap wasn't fast enough to make the field on its own. The past champion's provisional goes to the most recent past champion attempting to make the field.

"You don't even think about that," Wood said. "This had been scheduled for Bill for a long, long time. This is just where it wound up."

It was a much better day for some other drivers outside the top 35. Gillett Evernham driver Patrick Carpentier, a former open-wheeler who finished 21st in his lone Indianapolis 500 start for Eddie Cheever in 2005, will start his first Brickyard event in 15th. And Ambrose, who raced for the Wood Brothers at Sonoma but failed to make the field at New Hampshire in the No. 21 car, easily qualified in the debut of JTG/Daugherty Racing. Ambrose will start 24th in his No. 47 car.

"This is fairly spectacular considering the trouble we had [Friday]," Ambrose said. "We did a whole two laps [Friday] and didn't know what to do with the car. We're a start-up team, and we made it in [Saturday]. This feels like my first genuine Cup start. I feel like we have climbed Mount Everest after [Friday's] effort. We had less than seven minutes on the racetrack, and here we are, we qualified."

Meanwhile, the Wood Brothers packed up, another missed race putting them ever further behind in owner points. Eddie Wood could only shake his head. "Just another chapter in the book, man," he said.