Chasers up front as rain cancels qualifying at NHMS

LOUDON, N.H. -- Front-row starters Kyle Busch and Carl Edwards loved that rain wiped out Friday's qualifying session for the Sylvania 300 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Third-place Jimmie Johnson, on the other hand, would have loved a shot at the pole, but a persistent downpour forced NASCAR to cancel the session and set the field for Sunday's race according to owner points.

That means that the 12 drivers in the Chase for the Sprint Cup will take the green flag for the first of 10 Chase races in the top-12 positions, according to the order of their seeding. Dale Earnhardt Jr. will start fourth, followed by Clint Bowyer, Denny Hamlin, Jeff Burton, Tony Stewart, Greg Biffle, Jeff Gordon, Kevin Harvick and Matt Kenseth.

"It's great for [Friday] -- I feel pretty good about it raining [Friday] and putting us starting up front and getting a good pit selection and stuff like that," said Busch, who will start on the pole because of rain for the second consecutive week. "So that'll be great for Sunday. ... We unloaded here [Friday], and we sort of struggled, but the guys made some good changes there, and we got a lot better.

"There in our qualifying trim stuff, we ended up with the third-fastest time [in practice]. The things that we learned there [that] made the car faster for the qualifying trim, we'll sort of use to our advantage for the race trim stuff, hopefully, and be able to get our stuff better for [Saturday's practice]."

Johnson was second-fastest in Cup practice Friday and was disappointed not to get a chance at the first pit-stall selection, which goes to the pole winner.

"We didn't work on race trim [in practice]," Johnson said. "We were hopeful that qualifying would get in [Friday] and we'd have a shot at that first pit box [closest to Turn 1]. Unfortunately, the rain came and kept us from having that opportunity."

For Edwards, who was 33rd-fastest in practice, the second-place starting position is serendipitous.

"I hate to see the rain for the fans and for any of the teams that had to go home, but for us, this is a gift," Edwards said. "We were struggling in practice, so this gives us a really good opportunity to get a good starting spot and a great pit-stall selection. If we can get our act together [Saturday in practice], we should have a good race, but we were hurting a little bit [Friday].

"We started out in race trim, and then we went to qualifying trim, and we came here with something we hadn't raced here before, and we just weren't as fast as we needed to be."

Note: Joey Logano will make his Cup debut Sunday, because the No. 96 Toyota he'll drive made the field based on its number of qualifying attempts this season. Two cars with fewer attempts, the No. 34 of Tony Raines and the No. 46 of Carl Long, will not be part of the 43-car field.