The Duck Commander 500 was slated for 3 p.m. ET on Sunday, but heavy rainfall into the early afternoon delayed that plan. The new green flag start time is noon ET on Monday (televised on FOX).
 
Five of the Air Titan 2.0 Toyota Tundras descended onto the 1.5-mile, high-banked track once the Sunday downpour ended, but drying was slowed by cold temperatures and damp air. First-generation Air Titans and jet dryers also were on hand to help the effort.

NASCAR Executive Vice President for Racing Operations Steve O’Donnell also noted on Twitter that "weepers" — streams of water from the saturated track that come up onto the surface through cracks — stalled the drying process.
 
Tony Stewart, winner of the Coors Light Pole Award on Saturday, will lead the field to green Monday. His Stewart-Haas Racing teammate Kevin Harvick will start third after breaking the track speed record during the first round of multicar qualifying.

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Three of its four drivers — led by team owner Stewart in the No. 14 Mobil 1 Chevrolet — will start among the top 11 in Monday’s Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. Behind Stewart is SHR driver Kevin Harvick, who will start third and actually set a new track record (198.282 mph) in the opening round of qualifying. Last week’s race winner Kurt Busch will start 11th and Danica Patrick will roll off 24th.

But it’s not about where they start, but where they’re finishing that is most encouraging. SHR is the only team with multiple wins thanks to Busch and Harvick. Stewart has two top-fives in the last three races and now a pole. In her second year, Patrick has improved her rookie finishes in four of the six races.

"Yeah, the whole organization has been doing an awesome job,’’ Stewart said Friday. “Obviously, we are coming in a week after Kurt’s (Busch) win which is a great feeling for us. This is the first time I have been able to do something impressive for the team so I’m excited about that.

“We have got a good year started, to get two of our cars wins already. For us to get a pole, that is something that we are pretty proud of right now.”

This will also be the best start of the season for Harvick, who, along with Busch, gives the team’s two newcomers a 2-0 head start in victories — significant because the decision to add Busch as a fourth car was only made late in 2013.

Three of the four teams have new driver-crew chief pairings. Only Patrick has the same crew chief, Tony Gibson, as last season.

And then there is Stewart’s injury. He missed the last four months of the 2013 season recovering from a severely broken right leg.

So there were naturally a lot of questions about how the team would respond to expansion: how, when and how well.

“Honestly, I don’t even think we’ve scratched the surface as a team,’’ Harvick said. “We’re still trying to get all the cars built and everything organized and flowing exactly how it needs to flow in the shop and the fab shop with all the stuff that we’ve changed over the winter with adding a whole new team and bringing in new crew chiefs.

“And I think everybody, and as you can see with the No. 14, just getting their feet on the ground and getting to where we’re competing for poles and competing for wins, and having the speed in the car hasn’t been the issue for the No. 4 team as we’ve gone through the weeks. And I think we’ve just got a few things to clean up and things are going to be coming together even better.”

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“I wish we could start over, honestly. It’s been tough,’’ the good-natured Truex said, shaking his head and mustering a laugh.

“It started out really good, and went and turned bad very quickly.’’

Despite a litany of random adverse circumstances, the former Nationwide Series champ and two-time Cup winner Truex Jr. swears he’s not the least bit superstitious and doesn’t put good luck trinkets in his race car.

He did receive a good luck video via his Facebook page, courtesy of one of his youngest and most ardent fans, 10-year old Canadian Bryson Bangma, whose mom had her 1^st grade class sing an 11-second good luck video.

He looked genuinely surprised Saturday morning to see one of his team members, spotter Clayton Hughes, reveal a four-leaf clover inserted into his credential sleeve. He looked even more stunned to hear the team’s general manager Joe Garone laugh and divulge that Saturday morning, he’d actually stopped on the side of the road on the way to the track to toss a penny in a pond for good luck.

At this point, any change in fortune would be welcome news for Furniture Row Racing, which can’t seem to catch a break this season.

After Daytona, the team struggled at Phoenix (22^nd), made the wrong tire gamble on the last pit stop at Las Vegas (14^th), and broke a track bar mount at Bristol (36^th).

At California two weeks ago, the No. 78 Furniture Row Chevrolet blew a tire in practice forcing Truex into a back-up. A huge piece of debris flew up into the car during the race, causing substantial damage and he salvaged a 23^rd place finish.

Last week, Truex rallied from a poor qualifying run at Martinsville, and was running 10^th when he received a speeding penalty. He was spun out later in the race and finished 21^st.

“What goes through your mind is, hopefully next week will better,” Truex said. “That’s really all you can do. Racing is difficult. There’s a lot of things that happen on a weekend and a lot of opportunities for little things to screw your weekend up.

“Unfortunately for us, it’s happened more times than not this year. But there’s still some things from each of those weekends we can take away. We’re learning each other as far as the team goes — communication, the race cars, where we are as a team and what we need to work on to get better.

“Really, what we have to do is not let the things that have been happening out of our control get us down. We have to worry about what we can control.”

Truex mustered a smile when asked about the team’s morale. He insists both he and the team are doing well, that it probably looks worse from the outside. So much of what has happened is fixable. So much more has been fluke or circumstance.

Truex likes his chances here at super-fast Texas Motor Speedway, where he scored his first career Sprint Cup Series pole in 2007, and nearly won this race last year, finishing runner-up to Kyle Busch.

Last November, the last time the circuit raced at Texas, Truex was formally introduced as Furniture Row’s driver for the 2014 season. It was a major development for Truex, who lost his sponsorship and subsequent ride at MWR in the wake of the Richmond race controversy — not of his doing.

In many ways Truex believes the ordeal helped make him better equipped to deal with the difficulties and impediments the team has encountered early this season.

“For sure it’s been tougher (because of the great start at Daytona),’’ Truex said. “It was like okay, we took a deep breath and thought everything’s going fine. There’s nothing to be nervous about. When you go to a new team you don’t know what to expect, it makes you nervous. I spent four years at MWR and it started kinda rocky and we really worked hard to get where we were.

“Then all that stuff happened and you start over and it’s like, okay, is this going to go like last time and start out this rough and take a couple years to get things figured out?

“So starting the way it did, was like okay, awesome, this is great then all of a sudden it goes the opposite way.

 “This sport can really take you through some emotions, me in particular,’’ he said.

“I hate that I’ve had to go through all this crappy stuff, but all this that I’ve been through helps me get through a start to the season like this, being able to keep a positive attitude and perspective, making sure the team doesn’t get down and concentrates on what we’ve done well, not the things that have gone bad.

“All you can do is work as hard as you can and get better every single day,’’ he said smiling and then pausing.

“Every day is a new day. Every weekend is a new opportunity."

And that’s something his good luck kids could learn from.

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