DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- It may be the same game of golf, but Pebble Beach and Augusta National are worlds apart. And to Tony Stewart's thinking, Talladega and Daytona are both restrictor-plate superspeedways, but after that, they have little in common.

'The laps that you saw guys run [Thursday] versus what we did at Talladega ... you are watching guys that are working on the handling of the car versus just trying to make their car suck up so this race is very, very different," Stewart said before Sprint Cup qualifying was canceled because of persistent showers. "It's polar opposite from what you get at Talladega. Even though the tracks are similar in size and it's a restrictor plate race, it's two races that race total opposite from each other."

Stewart was one of those caught up in Thursday's wild and wooly practice sessions. The bad news? He'll be in a backup car. The good news? It's the one in which he won last year's race.

"The good news is that the car, the backup car, is actually the car I won the race with last year, so it is not a brand-new car," Stewart said. "Obviously we haven't run it this weekend. .... The challenge with it is figuring out the ride heights and making sure the thing is going to travel the same as the other car. I'm confident in that car. Obviously, it was a good car last year and handled well."

'Handled well" might be an understatement. Along with Denny Hamlin, Stewart was the class of the field. But he was chasing Kyle Busch to the checkered flag on the white-flag lap when all heck broke loose.

"I don't remember the whole last lap," Stewart said. "I just remember coming off of [Turn] 4 and we got a run on him. I remember he went to the inside to block us and we just kind of stayed to the outside and let the momentum carry. When he realized we were to the right, he went to block to the right and we were already there and it spun him across the nose.

"I would rather not have quite that dramatic of a finish from the standpoint of his side of it, more than ours. I would like our side to be about the same, but I don't want to see a big wreck afterwards because of it. It was definitely cool. It would have been interesting to see whether we were actually going to get all the way by him or if we were going to fall short if it went all the way to the line. But because of him driving across the nose, if definitely sealed the deal for us."

Based on Thursday's events, Stewart expects more of the same in Saturday night's Coke Zero 400.

"Unfortunately that is just a product of restrictor-plate racing," Stewart said. "... I think the reason that you see it in practice though, too, is because that is where you learn what you can and can't do in practice sessions.

"Everything that happened yesterday were mistakes, but a lot of times the reason you see so much of it in practice is that guys' cars are not handling the way that they would like and somebody that may have a good handling car behind them doesn't realize that and so that kind of gets us in predicaments in practice."

Stewart has won three previous July Daytona Cup races, and so with the old asphalt about to host its final event, he wouldn't mind owning a piece of the track.

"I would love to get a piece of the start/finish line, if at all possible," Stewart said. "We've won 14 races, I think, here now. But, yes, if I could get a piece of the start/finish line, it would be awesome. That is a keepsake that not too many people might have the opportunity to get.

"It would be pretty cool to have that opportunity. I may have to sneak out there Saturday after the race and go out there with a hammer and chisel to get my own section just in case I don't get anything."