WORSHAM USES DRAMATIC LAST-SESSION SAVE TO MAKE THE FIELD

Del Worsham entered Saturday knowing he had to improve over his Friday afternoon performance, if he wanted any chance at all to race on Sunday in Memphis. On a fine pass during Q3, Worsham's Checker, Schuck's, Kragen Impala broke a clutch component just before half-track and quickly went up in smoke, leaving him in the precarious 14th spot heading into the final session.

In Q4, by the time Worsham came to the line he had already been bumped well out of the field, and the ugly truth of it was right there in front of him. Run the number, or sit out on Sunday. When Worsham went A-to-B under power, his teammates surely expected a 4.80 of some sort to pop up on the board, but what they saw was a 4.915, which exactly tied him with teammate Jeff Arend. The question was, who got the higher position and was it good enough to make the field? The answer was, Worsham claimed the higher position based on speed, and the time was just barely good enough for both CSK teammates to make the race. Countdown drivers Mike Ashley and Jim Head each ran 4.916, one thousandth of a second slower than Worsham, and missed the field, along with Tim Wilkerson.

"There are so many ways to make up or lose a thousandth of a second on a run, you can't count them all," Worsham said. "Any bobble, any drift, even staging too deeply by a couple of inches, all of those things can cost you more than a thousandth, but we got it down there and we got in. I learned a long time ago not to feel bad about qualifying 15th or 16th, because these fields are so tough to make it doesn't matter what number they attach to you. Are you in the race or not? That's all that matters.

"On the first run today, it was running hard and probably had a 4.85 written all over it, but we broke a clutch arm before half-track and it just blew the tires off out there. In my more superstitious days, I would have let something like get me down, and I might have thought 'That's it, it's just not our day' but not anymore. We just went up there intent upon going to the finish line, and we got it done. We got in by the tiniest possible margin, but it doesn't matter. We're racing on Sunday."

Worsham will face Ashley Force in round one.