July 15, Nashville, TN.  On a day in which the remnants of Hurricane Dennis lingered over the Nashville area, wreaking havoc with the practice schedule early in the day, the Infiniti Pro Series managed to squeeze in its qualifying session just before the skies opened and saturated the track for the IndyCars scheduled to follow.  And again, as has been the case on so many ovals this year, when the dust settled (or in this case, when the rain started), Sam Schmidt Motorsports found themselves in solid possession of the front row with Jaime Camara on the pole with a qualification speed of 179.062 MPH.  His teammate Travis Gregg, the last car on the track for qualifications, was a close second with a speed of 178.864.

The Brian Stewart Racing drivers found themselves the runners-up with Wade Cunningham qualifying third and Arie Luyendyk, Jr. sitting in the fourth spot with lap speeds in the 177 mph range.  About the effort, Cunningham stated, "I'm dissapointed, but not too surprised.  We always seem to race better than we qualify.  We've got a good car for the race tomorrow."

Tom Wood, returning to the series after only running the Freedom 100 this year, qualified sixth, just in front of his teammate Jeff Simmons.  While explaining why the car was different after he posted the second fastest practice time of the day, but ended up qualifying 7th, Simmons said, "We really expected more, but I think we'll be able to make some changes and have a good racecar for tomorrow." 

Chris Festa was somewhat off the pace for the Schmidt stable, clocking in at 175.659 mph, and setting his #19 car in 8th.  Nick Bussell, after parting ways with JL West Motorsports, starts in 9th driving for Larry Curry and Vision Racing.  Sprint car veteran, Jerry Coons, Jr., taking the place of Mishael Abbott in the Hemelgarn entry will start on the outside of Row 5.  On the last row are Marty Roth, and Jay Drake, who had one of the fastest times in practice, but brushed the wall in the second practice session of the day and was unable to qualify.

The tightly grouped field, along with some extremely fast cars, like Jay Drake, towards the back should lead to some extremely exciting racing on Saturday.  According to Cunningham, "Starts, restarts, and the first group of laps should be the key to the race.  Towards the second half of the race, the track starts to pick up marbles, and it becomes harder to drive more than one line."

With that kind of prediction, Saturday's race should be one that is interesting from the outset -- if it doesn't rain, that is...