FanHouse

Don't be looking for Sprint Cup qualifying results Friday afternoon from Talladega Superspeedway in preparation for Sunday's Aaron's 499.

Instead, NASCAR will continue a format it started 2 years ago at the 2.5-mile restrictor plate track by qualifying for Sunday's race on Saturday morning.

Friday, Sprint Cup teams will hit the track for the first time at 2:30pm/ET for an hour long practice session. Final practice will then get underway at 4:05pm/ET and run until 4:55pm/ET.

Saturday morning, qualifying will roll off at 11:15am/ET with each driver taking two laps around the tri-oval. Once a car has completed the run, it will then move to impound where teams will have virtually no chance to make any significant changes to the car.

The process will also be used to the Nationwide Series as they will qualify Friday afternoon following Sprint Cup final practice.

NASCAR moved to adopt this weekend strategy a few years back for a number of tracks, but soon changed back to the traditional practice-qualify-final practice schedule for many events. Restrictor plate tracks have generally kept the schedule -- except for the Daytona 500's long, drawn-out process -- because the way teams qualify is no where near the way they'll race.

All in all, its a cost-saving measure, and makes qualifying interesting to see which teams may push their cars a little over the edge in qualifying to be guaranteed a spot in the race, though it may cause problems during the 500 mile race.

Rain could play some factor in the weekend activities as thunderstorms have a 70 percent chance on Saturday and a 60% chance on Sunday.