Las Vegas turned out to be a fitting place for the Motorcraft/Quick Lane team to have a little luck at the race track.

 With qualifying and practice for the Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway rained out on Friday, the starting line-up was set by last year’s owners points, and since the Wood Brothers team wound up 36^th in the 2012 standings despite running a limited schedule, Trevor Bayne will line up 36^th on Sunday.

 If that washout had come at Texas Motor Speedway, the next scheduled event for the team, the Woods’ limited schedule could lead to all the available starting spots going to teams running the full schedule, which includes two races they are not entering.

 “I’m glad we’re getting to race on Sunday instead of loading up and going home,” team owner Eddie Wood said. “But even if we fall victim to the weather somewhere down the road, we’ll just add another race to make up for it.”

 Despite the lack of practice and qualifying on Friday, Wood and the Motorcraft/Quick Lane team feel they’ll be well prepared for Sunday’s race, thanks to a rare Thursday test session at Las Vegas.

 Bayne and his Motocraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion were 14^th fastest in the second practice session on Thursday, and Wood feels that the lessons learned with their back-up Ford Fusion will transfer to the primary car, which is now in race trim and ready to hit the track for race practice on Saturday morning.

 “We’re happy with what we had in practice,” Wood said.

 Two brief practice sessions are set for Saturday, at noon and 2:35 p.m. eastern time, and

The Kobalt Tools 400 is scheduled to get the green flag just after 2:30 p.m. Eastern with TV coverage on FOX.

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Trevor Bayne and the Motorcraft/Quick Lane crew are hoping that Las Vegas Motor Speedway will be the place where they put their Daytona bad luck behind them.

The Wood Brothers crew has retooled its best intermediate-track Ford Fusion from last year into a 2013 model as part of NASCAR’s conversion to Generation-6 race cars for the Sprint Cup Series. The first true test of the Gen-6 cars on one of the intermediate-length tracks that comprise the bulk of the Wood Brothers’ limited schedule will come in Sunday’s Kobalt Tools 400.  First and foremost, there are two practice sessions on Thursday, and Donnie Wingo; crew chief of the No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion, is hoping to use those to gather as much data as possible.

“We’re actually going to run the back-up car in the test, because that will allow us more time on the track,” Wingo said, explaining that if the team ran its primary car in the test, valuable time would be lost getting the test equipment removed before race practice begins on Friday.

He said the two cars are so much alike that anything learned with one can be applied to the other.

“They both blew about the same numbers in the wind tunnel,” he said. “We’ll try some different things and figure out what works the best for us and for Trevor.”

Wingo said that any time there’s a change to a new vehicle, there will be a learning curve, and this weekend will offer one of the big lessons.

“Like anything new, it’ll take a little time to figure it all out.”

Team co-owner Eddie Wood said he’s anxious to see his 2013 Ford Fusion in competition, especially in light of Carl Edwards’ win in a Roush Fenway Racing Fusion last weekend at Phoenix International Raceway.  He’s proud to once again have his team’s Ford Fusion painted in a more traditional Motorcraft/Quick Lane scheme.

“We ran a special paint scheme at Daytona to honor Tiny Lund’s win in the 1963 Daytona 500 and my uncle Leonard’s induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame,” Wood said. “Now we’re back to one based on the cars driven by Cale Yarborough and David Pearson.”

Qualifying for the Kobalt Tools 400 is set for Friday at 6:40 p.m. Eastern Time, and the race is set to get the green flag just after 2:30 p.m. Eastern with TV coverage on FOX.

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Crew chief Donnie Wingo and the crew of the No. 21 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion battled back from a crash in Thursday’s Budweiser Duel to put a brand new Ford Fusion on the track for Sunday’s Daytona 500.  Despite the high hopes, another incident midway through the 500 kept them from being able to put a happy ending on their Speedweeks story.

On Lap 139 of 200, nine drivers, including Trevor Bayne in the Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion, crashed heading into Turn One. Bayne’s Fusion sustained considerable damage, but his crew patched up the car, and he finished the race in 27^th position, two laps off the pace.

“It looked like somebody checked up in front [Brad Keselowski’s No. 2 Ford Fusion], and he slowed down,” Bayne explained. “I slowed down and still got in the back of him a little bit, but not enough to wreck him, and then I got drilled from behind and it just turned me.”

Up to that point, Bayne had been able to run up into the top half of the field from his 33^rd starting position, but he was never able to get up front, as he did in Thursday’s opening Duel, where he led a race-high 36 laps.

“I kept trying to pull down to the bottom to try to make something happen, but anytime I pulled out of line I got freight-trained,” Bayne said.

Team co-owner Eddie Wood said that despite the disappointing results he was proud of his team’s efforts in Speedweeks.

“We brought two fast cars down here, but just never were able to get to the front in the 500,” he said. “We’ll take them home, fix them both and have them ready to go at Talladega.” Next up on the schedule for Bayne and the Motorcraft/Quick Lane crew is the Kobalt Tools 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 8-10.

That race will be the first intermediate-track test of the new Generation-6 Sprint Cup race car, and it will come at one of Bayne’s best race tracks. He finished ninth there last year.

Wood said his team already has put a lot of effort into putting a fast 2013 Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion on the track for the 400-miler at Las Vegas.

“We put a new 2013 Ford Fusion body on the best-handling chassis we had from last year,” Wood said. “We’re anxious to get there and see how it goes.”

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The scene in the Motorcraft/Quick Lane garage area at Daytona International Speedway on Thursday was a tale of two race cars. On one side of the aisle, there was a battered No. 21 Ford Fusion, one that led more than half of the first of two Budweiser Duel qualifying races, but was later wiped out in a crash.

On the other side sat a brand-new Fusion, one that had never even been rolled on asphalt before it was unloaded from the Wood Brothers’ hauler.

The first car, despite the damage, did its job. It was third fastest in qualifying, assuring Trevor Bayne and the team a starting spot for Sunday’s Daytona 500. Bayne will start 33^rd, one spot worse than he started in 2011 when he won the 500.

The other car now is poised to pick up where the first one left off. First, there’s plenty of preparation to be done by crew chief Donnie Wingo and the Motorcraft/Quick   Lane crew.

“We may not even practice on Friday, but that’s OK,” said team co-owner Eddie Wood. “We didn’t practice on Friday in 2011, and we won that race.”

There also is a final practice session set for Saturday, and Wood said he was confident the new car would be race ready by then.

Despite the battered car in the background on Thursday, Wood and the rest of the Motorcraft crew seemed upbeat.

“You can’t be disappointed when you lead more that half the race,” he said.

Indeed, for a time, Bayne and his red-and-white Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Fusion looked like winners in the first of Thursday’s Budweiser Duels. Bayne started on the outside pole and passed pole-sitter Danica Patrick on the opening lap. He led the first 36 circuits, but slid entering pit road, flat-spotting his right-front tire, and setting up a four-tire change.

Still, he was in position to race his way back to the front when he was swept up in a multi-car crash on the backstretch with six laps to go.

“It is unfortunate because we had a fast race car, and you don’t want to tear that stuff up,” Bayne said. “I know they have a good back-up car for me, and we will try to get it on Sunday.”
The 55^th annual Daytona 500 is set to get the green flag on Sunday just after 2 p.m. with TV coverage on FOX.

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