RICHMOND, Va. -- On a rain-soaked Friday evening at Richmond International Raceway, there was no telling when the Joey Logano Era in Sprint Cup racing would take the green flag, after qualifying for the Chevy Rock & Roll 400 was cancelled.

The cutoff race for the Chase for the Sprint Cup will now be held Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m. ET, but without Logano, who in just 105 minutes of practice Friday morning made a serious statement about what his impact on NASCAR's premier division would eventually be.

“

I seem to like the Cup car more, but probably because it has more horsepower and it is more fun to me. To know that you could come off the trailer and be good, that was a big plus for me mentally.

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JOEY LOGANO

With the best stock-car racers in the world amped-up for the impending start of NASCAR's championship playoff, Logano, 18, came out of the gate for his first official practice in a Cup car third on the time sheet. He quit 15 minutes early and ran only 39 laps, which left him fourth at the time.

When practice ended, Logano was ninth on the chart, with a lap only .122 seconds slower than fast man Jeff Gordon, coincidentally a four-time Cup champion. As impressive as it was, in the end it did him no good.

Logano's Joe Gibbs Racing team entered a No. 02 Toyota for the first time this season, for their development program's star to make his first attempt at a Cup start. When rain from Tropical Storm Hanna began falling at about 4:15 p.m. ET Friday afternoon, it was the death knell for Logano's debut hopes.

When NASCAR pulled the plug on Sprint Cup qualifying and both Friday night's Nationwide Series Emerson Radio 250 and Saturday night's 400-lap Cup event -- postponing both races to Sunday -- Logano's car, one of 46 entries for the 43-car field, did not satisfy the rulebook parameters to gain a starting position.

The fact that Logano, by virtue of his No. 20 JGR Toyota leading the owner standings in the Nationwide Series, would start on the pole for Sunday evening's 250-lapper was no consolation for his Cup washout.

"That would suck a lot," Logano had said at mid-afternoon, when asked about the poor weather forecast. "I can't change the weather, so I just go with it. I've heard a lot about [the weather] and I haven't heard too much good so I really don't want to hear a whole bunch."

The less-than-stellar news continued when a Joe Gibbs Racing spokesman said team officials were discussing options for when Logano's Cup debut would occur and in what vehicle. Hall of Fame Racing, a JGR ally, had previously announced Logano would run that team's No. 96 Toyota next weekend at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

The rainstorm interrupted what had started in almost fabled fashion for Logano.

A white hauler -- bereft of any signage except for a black Toyota emblem in the center of the tailgate -- Friday sat as far away from the Sprint Cup garage area as you could get in Richmond's infield, and still have a connection to it.

The most telling aspect of how busy life is at the sport's uppermost level was that this truck, which is the workhorse for Joe Gibbs Racing's R&D testing program, didn't even have a proper set of sliding doors sealing the back -- only a flexible, vinyl-like material cut longitudinally in wide strips keeping out the wind, rain and prying eyes.

It was from this location -- which was a familiar one since the Connecticut youngster's done a ballpark 30 Cup Series tests for JGR over the last two years -- that Logano took the first steps in what might be a short journey to setting the Cup landscape on edge. And Logano, like the average 18-year-old, took it all in stride, as he has at every step of his racing career that started more than a decade ago outside Hartford, Conn.

"I'm just excited really," Logano said after practice. "I was really excited to just get out there and practice and see what it's going to be like. It seemed to go pretty good right off the trailer so the car handled pretty good. We tried some different things and it handled a lot like my Nationwide car as far as the attitude of the car -- it would go a little loose and then a little tight."

Logano said that made it easier to go back and forth for about two hours of practice in the Nationwide vehicle before he got in the Cup car.

"Overall it was pretty good," Logano said, displaying a veteran's analytical insight. "I seem to think that the Cup car seems to suit my driving style better than the Nationwide car. When I'm driving the Nationwide car it seems like there is no horsepower and it is all momentum and you have to hustle those cars a lot to get them going. In the Cup cars it seems like you can drive it into the corner straight, get it turning and focus on your forward drive. I think with the Nationwide car you are arcing it in there and getting back to the gas as soon as you can and using the least amount of brake as you can [so] they drive a lot different that way.

"I seem to like the Cup car more, but probably because it has more horsepower and it is more fun to me. To know that you could come off the trailer and be good, that was a big plus for me mentally."

And it was justification for the veteran Mark Martin, who began singing Logano's praises to anyone who would listen, most notably at the 2005 Homestead-Miami Speedway Cup season finale. Martin said he would be comfortable racing a Cup car against Logano then, when the kid was 15 years old.

On Friday, before he knew Logano wouldn't race this weekend Martin was less than low-key about his role in Logano's success, saying he deserved none of the credit.

"I didn't do it, he did it -- and his dad," Martin said. "His dad deserves maybe more than 50 percent [of the credit]. His dad molded the man that [Joey Logano] is and helped him realize his dreams. The kid has got in there and done it ever since he was 10 years old."

Martin first saw Logano racing Legends cars, when Martin's son, Matt, was also racing in that area, and that the elder Martin had no doubt what he saw in Logano.

"I know what I'm looking at [and] I knew he was better than the rest," Martin said. "Same thing you see -- just amazing. He is fast. He knows what he is doing."

Martin said not to try to make Logano's ability more complex than it really is, whenever his first Cup start comes.

"I think he is better than the other guys, it is that simple," Martin said. "It is just not that complex -- he is better than everyone else in his league."