Daytona quals great for some, horrible for others

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Sprint Cup qualifying is usually the perfect example of instant gratification for racers: You run a fast enough lap, and you're in the race.

But Daytona 500 pole qualifying, as well as the rest of Speedweeks, is a unique event and a setting for three-and-a-half days of agony waiting for Thursday's Gatorade Duel 150 qualifying races. All Sunday's session at Daytona International Speedway did was lock-in the front row for the 51st Great American Race, as well as four of the 22 go-or-go-home drivers.

First-time Daytona 500 pole winner Martin Truex Jr. and veteran Mark Martin are on the front row, but they were in the race anyway. Bill Elliott, Travis Kvapil, Tony Stewart and Terry Labonte are the happiest of the drivers in the go-or-go-home group because their speeds locked them into the 500.

Elliott was fastest in both Cup practices Saturday with a speed that would have been good enough for second if he ran it Sunday, but he wasn't second-guessing Sunday's effort.

"I think it says it on the board. We're the fastest of the Fords and that was a very impressive run as far as we're concerned," Elliott said. "It's kind of a double-edged sword being that we didn't get the pole, but there again, we're out of the top 35 in points and we needed a good, solid run; so that's kind of where we need to be."

The shame Sunday was that go-or-go-home drivers Regan Smith, Joe Nemechek and Boris Said, followed a couple tenths of a second later by Scott Riggs, A.J. Allmendinger and Brad Keselowski, turned decent speeds, but it doesn't matter.

The qualifying procedure is so slanted to favor the top 35 in the previous year's owners' points that not being locked-into the top-three speeds in qualifying leaves them -- as well as the other 11 go-or-go-homers -- with the daunting task of racing-in on Thursday.

At least Allmendinger has said he's learned to relax after he crashed out of his qualifier in 2007 and was one spot out of qualifying last year.

"Certainly not the run that we were looking for," Allmendinger said. "More than anything, the last two days has given us a bunch of confidence heading into the Duels. The last two years, I put so much pressure on myself that for three days [prior to the Duels] I was on a knife's edge of emotions.

"Over the last two years, I learned that all I can do is go out and race as hard as I can, run my race and drive the wheels off the race car like I always do -- leave everything on the race track. I'm just going to go try and relax for a couple days and focus on the good things that we did Saturday night and come back Thursday and try to race our way into the 500."

Elliott qualified fifth overall in his No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford, Kvapil was eighth in the No. 28 Yates Racing Ford and Stewart was 10th in his own No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet. Labonte makes it in via a past champion's provisional.

"I have such mixed emotions [because] this whole Motorcraft team really put a good plan together to come down here for the 500 this year and I'm so proud of what they've done," Elliott said. "I'm disappointed for those guys that we didn't sit on the pole, as good as we ran yesterday, but on the flip side I look back a year ago when we ended up loading that Motorcraft Ford up, going home. It's such a fine line."

Kvapil was even more relieved as, after a couple point swaps at Yates left him in the group that needs a fast speed to get into races; he's unsure if his season will go beyond Bristol, depending on sponsorship.

"I'm just really proud of everybody on this Yates Racing team," said Kvapil, whose Yates team swept the front row here in 2007. "We're just really excited to have Golden Corral come on for the 500 and, hopefully, we can have a good showing for them and there might be more down the road.

"What we had here today, we knew we had some in the bag, but we really didn't believe we had four-tenths [of a second]. In practice yesterday we didn't do all the little tricks like pulling the brakes back and all the heaters, all the oils, all the things everybody does and we didn't do any of that. I'm just really proud to have our Ford in the top 10."

Of the other six, only four will make the 500, with two go-or-go-homers coming out of each Gatorade Duel.

"I'm disappointed with that run because I think that we all thought that we could have been a lot faster than that," said Riggs, whose second Cup season was badly impacted when he failed to make the 500. "I'm proud of all the guys and how hard they worked. We have to take care of the car [in the Duel] and we have to make sure the car is going to handle because it's 60 laps and your car is going to go away fast, it seemed like from watching the [Budweiser Shootout]."

Owner/drivers Jeremy Mayfield and Kirk Shelmerdine, Mike Wallace, Tony Raines and Mike Garvey are in the difficult position of being in the middle of the go-or-go-home pack and need to have super-tuned race cars on Thursday.

Wallace, who made TRG Motorsports' first Cup qualifying effort in 46th position Sunday, has a 25-year string in which a member of his family -- either Rusty, Kenny or him -- being in the 500 on the line on Thursday.

A full third of the go-or-go-home contingent is field-fillers, with little hope of anything except the thrill of starting a qualifying race at Daytona, though that group includes a former Daytona 500 pole winner, Mike Skinner, and two former Daytona 500 winners, Derrike Cope and Geoff Bodine.

Of course, strange things have happened, as in the massive accident in a 1992 qualifier that put low-on-the-qualifying-sheet drivers Delma Cowart, Mike Potter and Dorsey Schroeder into the big show.