Rain Puts Johnson on Auto Club Pole

The newly-renamed Auto Club Speedway of Southern California (man, that's a gawdy mouthful) had plenty of laps turned on its banks Friday.

The only problem, though, was that those laps didn't have a single racing vehicle involved.

Rain, seeping water, and more rain prevented all three of NASCAR's series -- Sprint Cup, Nationwide, Craftsman Truck -- from practicing or qualifying Friday, leaving all of the driving duties up to the jet dryers who tried all afternoon to get the surface prepared.

Instead, Saturday will be quite a busy day at ACS (yep, still weird) as both the Nationwide and Craftsman Truck Series will race, Nationwide will get a practice session, and the Sprint Cup teams will get practice sessions.

As FanHouse stated yesterday, the rain definitely played havoc with teams outside of the Top-35 from last year's owner points who made the trip trying to make Sunday's Sprint Cup Auto Club 500.

While Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon will share the front row, five drivers will head home including A.J. Allmendinger, Ken Schrader, Patrick Carpentier, Burney Lamar and Mike Skinner.

The forecast for Satuday in Fontana looks a little bit better during the day with skies expected to be partly sunny, but there's a 60% chance of rain in the evening when both races are expected to be run. Sunday doesn't look very promising for racing with a 90% chance of rain during the day and 20% that evening. Fortunately, California Auto Club does have lights, and teams would much rather stay deep into the night than have to run a race on Monday.

First rainout of the year in its second race? Let's hope not.