Drivers prepare for All-Star Race after rain halts qualifying

In NASCAR's highly anticipated return to its roots this weekend, Mother Nature turned out to be the first winner Friday.

Late afternoon rain at North Wilkesboro Speedway in North Carolina postponed qualifying for Sunday's All-Star Race and set the field by points for the All-Star Open, the preliminary race before the 200-lap headline event.

Instead, the Pit Crew Challenge used to qualify the All-Star participants for Saturday's heat races will take place in the morning.

Denny Hamlin likes what the ensuing tire tests revealed following the 0.625-mile track's repaving in March.

"If it turns into a tire conservation race, I definitely like my chances," said Hamlin, who won the 2015 All-Star event at Charlotte Motor Speedway. "It gives the teams options to run what they think is best for them.

"Any time we are all on the same tire, at times, it seems like we all run the same speed. I like the idea of the driver playing a bigger role in your result and they certainly will (Sunday)."

The No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing driver has one win in 17 starts in the All-Star Race, which was held at Bristol Motor Speedway in 2020 after a 33-year run in Charlotte. Then it ran for two seasons at Texas Motor Speedway.

Saturday's two heat races will be quick -- 60-lap shootouts with a halfway break that will determine the All-Star Race's inside and outside rows for Sunday night's $1 million top prize.

Preceding the 200-lapper (8 p.m. ET) will be The Open, a 100-lap event. The top two finishers will advance to the final race with a fan selection allowing the top vote-getter to occupy the final spot in the 20-car field.

On Friday in the first qualifying session, Austin Dillon paced The Open with a best lap of 18.29 seconds (122.96 mph), but a rain shower denied Alex Bowman and Ty Gibbs a chance to post times.

The rain never let up, and the field was then set by points, with Gibbs and Bowman sharing the front row based on those points.

"I wish they'd have both gotten (their laps) in there because I think our lap was pretty strong," said Dillon, who will instead start his No. 3 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet 15th. "I think we balanced our car around both of (the tires). ... The hard tire is a little freer. The soft tire felt (like) you got heat in it and it laid down a little bit."

There's some newness at the incredibly old venue in the hills of western North Carolina.

North Wilkesboro Speedway, which has been in existence since 1947, has received a facelift, primarily due to the efforts of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Marcus Smith beginning in late 2019.

An avid online racer following his retirement, Earnhardt, a 26-time Cup race winner, wanted to immortalize the decaying facility in a digital format, cleaning up the track physically then scanning it for future iRacers.

That lit the fire in Smith, the successor to his father Bruton Smith at Speedway Motorsports Inc., the company that owns the short track in the curvy foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

An intense refurbishing of the speedway led to its first NASCAR event last May -- the All-Star Race -- on the old racing surface. Kyle Larson dominated the event, but two months ago, the track's asphalt received its first repave since 1981.