Prism scrambles to get its Las Vegas car together (cont'd)

In a tough economic climate, Prism is short-staffed and financially challenged. While the team proved its mettle in 2009 by sending a car to every event, with its last-minute decision to field two cars this season, Prism only has two complete cars -- one for each team -- with a mostly-complete backup on each hauler.

While trying to accrue enough sponsorship backing to be able to afford to race complete events, Prism does a "start and park" strategy to offset the sizeable expense of traveling to and attempting to qualify for Cup races.

At Fontana, Prism's two cars combined to run 83 laps, with Blaney actually leading three of his 43 laps, and they won $160,070. With Las Vegas' $6.2 million in posted awards, the last two positions in Sunday's race are guaranteed to pay a minimum $158,086.

So the weekend's payoff came Friday afternoon when Prism's two Toyotas -- neither with displayed primary sponsorship -- qualified for Sunday's main event. Michael McDowell qualified for his third consecutive 2010 race, putting his primary car 33rd; while Blaney, using a backup engine with some of his primary car's best parts, put his team's cobbled-together backup into the lineup in 36th.

It was well off the fifth-place run Blaney had at Fontana -- Blaney's best speedway qualifying lap since fall 2008 -- but under the circumstances it left Parsons thankful.

"We really appreciate all the hard work by all our guys this week," Parsons said. "It was a great job [Friday] by all of them."

But Parsons wouldn't short sell what NASCAR and its inspectors had done, along with engine builder Terry Elledge from Pro Motor, Mark Smith's partner who Parsons said was the head of the company's Toyota program, turned around a complete backup engine for Blaney's car, plus a carburetor and intake manifold that were intended as the former backup engine's primary pieces, which weren't needed when NASCAR bent over backwards.

"NASCAR actually came in here [Thursday] and let us take the engine out of the [Fontana] car so it could be inspected, and let us take some of the pieces that we needed to put in the backup car -- so they did us a favor," Parsons said. "They actually came in early to do that, they unloaded it and we took the motor out so they could inspect it. They finished it [Friday], doing the body, the rear end housing and the rest of it.

"If we'd have been on the East Coast, all this would have been done at the R&D Center on the Tuesday after the race."

Parsons, who earlier in the week was scrambling on the phone to get a set of headers for Blaney's backup, laughed and said the situation surrounding the impounding of his car had somewhat been overblown.

"We were in pretty good shape anyway, truthfully. We had sent some stuff from back East, because we were not planning on racing this car until the other one was impounded. We wanted the carburetor and intake -- and the sway bar off the [Fontana] car -- but we had replaced everything because we didn't really know the timeframe that we'd get the pieces back in."

The newly-assembled "Vegas primary" was in the inspection line at Las Vegas on time Friday morning and went out for the first of its 10 laps in pre-qualifying practice about 15 minutes into the 90-minute practice.

To some degree, the biggest favor NASCAR has done might be to get the No. 66 team's backup more prepared.

"We got everything we needed off the [Fontana] car [Thursday]," Parsons said. "Theoretically, I guess it's been released to us so we could put it back together and run it if we had to -- if we wrecked in qualifying or practice. My guys said it had been released to us and we could bring it back over and load it up, or whatever."

In his 10 practice laps, Blaney was better than only two of the cars he had to beat, which made Parsons nervous while waiting for qualifying, where Blaney also bested Aric Almirola, who qualified on his first lap and then slapped the wall in Turn 1 on his second effort in James Finch's No. 09 Chevrolet.

"We're not that fast right now and if you ask 'which piece on that car was the key?' -- I wouldn't want the whole package," Parsons said. "I'd want the whole [Fontana] car if I had my choice. We've struggled a little with these cars because they're so finicky. A big swing is not that much [of an adjustment]."

But in the end, he was pleased with the job his drivers once again did in the difficult to tame new cars.

"We've got great drivers and they get out of it whatever they're going to get out of it," Parsons said. "The weather can help and so can having a good car. But when I was driving, I would always say, 'don't look for me to pick up a lot in qualifying, because my tongue's already hanging out in practice.'

"Getting out of it whatever you can get out of it is the key."