Rain at Loudon gives Kyle Busch pole

For the second week in a row - and for the fourth time this season - the 23-year-old inherits pole position due the weather conditions. The Gibbs' driver is playing double-duty this weekend, competing also in the Craftsman Truck series race, which takes place on Saturday afternoon.

The cancellation of qualifying also means that the starting line up will have all the drivers in the Chase starting from the first twelve spots on Sunday, as the field is set according to the owner points' standing.

Tony Raines and Carl Long will miss the race without a chance to try to qualify their way in, while Joey Logano will finally make his Sprint Cup debut in the No. 96 Hall of Fame Toyota, starting from 39th place, which is close to where he finished practice earlier in the day.

"I kind of want to see what my car's going to do before I set a goal for the race," Logano said. "If we have a top-10 car then I want to finish in the top 10. Something like that, but I think the biggest part of this weekend is going to be to gain respect from all those guys because we will race against those guys for a long time."

Last year's event winner Clint Bowyer was fastest in the morning practice, followed by title favourites Jimmie Johnson and Kyle Busch, both of them running within less then half a tenth of the RCR's driver benchmark of 29.237 seconds. Jamie McMurray and Ryan Newman rounded up the top-five.

"We were very competitive here in the spring," Johnson said. "We were running down the No. 20 car (Tony Stewart) and we all came to pit road and then the rains came after that. So I feel like we have a very good baseline to work from this weekend and we have a very good car off the truck."

Slowest among the Chase drivers were Roush Fenway's Carl Edwards down in 33rd place and his teammate Matt Kenseth down in 39th, both ending more than half a second off from Bowyer's time.

"We started out in race trim and then we went to qualifying trim and we came here with something we hadn't raced here before and we just weren't as fast as we needed to be," Edwards said.

"Some of my teammates were quite a bit quicker, so we were just going to have to kind of lean on them a little bit for qualifying and hope for the best. It would have been spectacular for us to end up second, so this is really good luck for us."

Teams will have two more practice sessions on Saturday, when weather forecasts look more promising, although there is a 60 per cent chance of rain for Sunday. The fall event at New Hampshire was shortened due to rain in the second half of the race, handing victory to Penske's Kurt Busch.

Race line-up:

Pos  Driver              Make
 1.  Kyle Busch          Toyota   
 2.  Carl Edwards        Ford     
 3.  Jimmie Johnson      Chevrolet
 4.  Dale Earnhardt Jr   Chevrolet
 5.  Clint Bowyer        Chevrolet
 6.  Denny Hamlin        Toyota   
 7.  Jeff Burton         Chevrolet
 8.  Tony Stewart        Toyota   
 9.  Greg Biffle         Ford     
10.  Jeff Gordon         Chevrolet
11.  Kevin Harvick       Chevrolet
12.  Matt Kenseth        Ford     
13.  Kasey Kahne         Dodge    
14.  David Ragan         Ford     
15.  Aric Almirola       Chevrolet
16.  Brian Vickers       Toyota   
17.  Ryan Newman         Dodge    
18.  Martin Truex Jr     Chevrolet
19.  Jamie McMurray      Ford     
20.  Kurt Busch          Dodge    
21.  Bobby Labonte       Dodge    
22.  Juan Montoya        Dodge    
23.  Elliott Sadler      Dodge    
24.  Travis Kvapil       Ford     
25.  Casey Mears         Chevrolet
26.  David Gilliland     Ford     
27.  David Reutimann     Toyota   
28.  Paul Menard         Chevrolet
29.  Regan Smith         Chevrolet
30.  Reed Sorenson       Dodge    
31.  Dave Blaney         Toyota   
32.  Michael Waltrip     Toyota   
33.  Scott Riggs         Chevrolet
34.  AJ Allmendinger     Toyota   
35.  Michael McDowell    Toyota   
36.  Sam Hornish Jr      Dodge    
37.  Bill Elliott        Ford     
38.  Robby Gordon        Dodge    
39.  Patrick Carpentier  Dodge    
40.  Joey Logano         Toyota   
41.  Chad McCumbee       Dodge    
42.  Joe Nemechek        Chevrolet
43.  Johnny Sauter       Chevrolet