All wet

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – Let's say you're three-quarters of the way done with a drive from New York to Los Angeles when you sustain a flat tire somewhere in New Mexico. Do you immediately turn around and go back home and start over, or do you fix the flat and then continue on to your destination?

Duh, that's a no-brainer. Of course you complete what you started.

That is, unless you're NASCAR, and the issue isn't a cross-country drive, but a five-mile qualifying run.

For all the effort the sanctioning body is putting in to make the Car of Tomorrow a success by coming down hard on teams that make even the smallest changes to the COT, thus keeping the playing field as level as possible, it does a complete 180-degree turn when it comes to qualifying.

Case in point: Friday's aborted qualifying run for the Pepsi 400. A total of 39 drivers were able to post speeds on the board before rain put a halt to the proceedings, leaving 14 drivers unqualified and at the weather's mercy.

But instead of resuming qualifying Saturday morning (weather permitting) so that the 14 who didn't get a chance to run Friday would have an equal opportunity to make Saturday night's race, NASCAR ruled that Friday's rain not only washed out the remainder of qualifying, it also washed away the results of the 39 that did have their turn.

It means Boris Said, who was on the provisional pole when the rain came, goes home instead of starting up front. It's a similar story for guys like Jeremy Mayfield and Michael Waltrip, who qualified well but don't have enough owner points to make the show.

Not exactly a level playing field.

There are no good reasons why NASCAR could not allow the 14 guys who didn't get out Friday – which included some drivers needing to qualify on speed – to come back Saturday morning and make their runs.

No, that option actually would be fair.

Sure, NASCAR would argue that the track surface and conditions at the 2½-mile Daytona International Speedway would be completely different than they were Friday. But conditions had changed plenty from when Kenny Wallace took to the track first Friday afternoon to when Jeremy Mayfield became the last of the 39 to take his turn before the clouds opened up.

The temperature had begun to drop, the track had begun to cool off and the grip had improved. And conditions almost always change from the beginning of qualifying to the end, so coming back Saturday morning wouldn't be an issue in that regard.

Instead, Said's potential pole effort goes for naught, as he, Mayfield, A.J. Allmendinger and Kirk Shelmerdine, all who had convincingly made the field at the point the skies opened, are sent home.

"You definitely sympathize for them," said Denny Hamlin, who didn't get a chance to qualify but easily made the field on points. "I hate to see that maybe we couldn't have done it some other time. The conditions aren't going to be that much different.

"Even when it was bright and sunny outside and very, very hot, the times didn't pick up when it was cooler at night. You're going to run what you're going to run."

Hamlin was all but embarrassed that he received a free pass in qualifying and will start Saturday's race on the outside pole due to owner points, which is how NASCAR sets the field when qualifying is washed out.

"I would rather that we qualify and I end up 30th or 35th and let those guys do what they earned rather than back into a second-place start like we did," Hamlin said. "It's really not worth it to me because we know what all those other teams are going through to make these races."

Points leader Jeff Gordon concurred with Hamlin. Instead of starting 30th or worse, which was where Gordon would have begun Saturday's race, he is awarded his fifth pole of the season.

"I definitely don't feel comfortable being (top qualifier) here right now," Gordon said. "As much as we needed rain for as bad as we qualified, it really is upsetting for those guys that were outside the top 35, especially guys like Boris who had put up such a great effort."

Allowing teams a chance to make the show is even a more prevalent issue this season with the larger entry lists for Cup races each week, partly due to Toyota's presence in Nextel Cup. It could be argued that canceling qualifying now is detrimental to more teams than it has been in recent seasons.

NASCAR spokesperson Kerry Tharp said the decision to delete the completed portion of Friday's qualifying session and revert back to owner points is based upon NASCAR's rulebook as well as an established protocol making coming back to either complete or restart qualifying the next day an extremely rare occurrence. Tharp added that a track's weekend schedule also often does not allow for events to be rescheduled.

But considering NASCAR's penchant for changing rules based upon nothing more than a whim, or changing course midstream as a season is well under way, it seems calling a rules adjustment to address situations like Friday's at Daytona wouldn't be unreasonable.

An adjustment that would have allowed qualifying to pick up Saturday where it left off Friday.

That would only be fair and would give credit where it was due: to the teams that worked so hard to make the field, only to have the green flag snatched away from them not by lack of effort or a fellow driver with a better car, but only because of where they're at in the standings – and bad weather.

"I'm disappointed," Said admitted. "We put so much work in this car, and now we have the most expensive show car ever built. But I feel really proud of what our team has done, with four full-time people and making eight-for-eight races.

"I'm going to count this race as a race made."

Too bad NASCAR won't.