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Qualifying washed out

Rain wiped out qualifying for the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway on Friday, putting NASCAR's playoff contenders in the spotlight and thwarting Ryan Newman's bid for a record-equalling fifth consecutive pole, as the contenders will start from championship positions

Qualifying was also rained out before the first of the 10 'Chase for the Cup' races, at New Hampshire in September, with the order decided by points and criteria. Current Nextel Cup points leader Kurt Busch won that race and has never been headed since.

Busch will thus start on pole for Sunday's race - the last running for one of NASCAR's most historic events. The Southern 500, held on Labor Day weekend since 1950, will disappear from the calendar next year, as Darlington is cut from two dates to one. The remaining date is run on Mothers' Day weekend. The Labor Day date has been transferred to California.

Busch leads Jeff Gordon by 41 points, Dale Earnhardt Jr by 47 and Jimmie Johnson by 48 in what amounts to a four-man run-in for the title. The drivers will start in that order Sunday.

During the rain, the top drivers were asked about running the next-to-last race at a difficult track like Darlington. "This is a tough track, and you can't get too caught up in what the other competitors are doing," said Busch. "You have to respect the race track first and foremost, so for us, 500 miles is a daunting task.

"It's definitely different from a regular 400-mile race, so there's plenty of time for things to go wrong. We hope we have one of those perfect days you always want to put together at Darlington."

Earnhardt Jr crashed early in practice and immediately switched to his back-up car. "It's actually a little faster than the first car," he said. "It's a car we haven't run this year. We ran it last year and had lots of success with it. It drives really good.

"I don't really know what happened. I was coming around Turns 1 and 2 and got a little bit up out of the groove and got into the fence. It happens. I wasn't too worried about it. We always carry good race cars to the race track, and any time we tear up our primary car, I feel pretty confident about what we've got in the trailer."

Meanwhile, Newman, bidding to match Cale Yarborough's 1980 record of five poles in a row, was fastest in morning practice by two-tenths of a second. Due to the rain, however, Newman never got a try at the pole.

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