WORSHAM SLIDES SOFTLY INTO 11th SPOT

Del Worsham battled the brutal elements, just like everyone else, in today's first session, spinning his way to a 5.823 on the scalding Seattle track, which landed him in the No. 7 spot after one run. During the early evening session, run well before sunset but still in much better conditions than the first lap, Worsham kept it stuck from end to end, posting a 5.003, which was good enough for the No. 11 spot overnight.

"We were just soft, not enough pop in it out there," Worsham said. "We weren't trying to be that conservative, I promise you. We just didn't have enough power in it to really get going. It's a good thing we made it the full lap, because you'll need to do that on Sunday, when it could be really hot, but we wanted to go quicker than that. We had some parts breakage on that run, and that slowed us down quite a bit.

"We saw what our blue team did early in the session (Phil Burkart ran 4.898, which held on for the No. 1 spot) and that showed us there was plenty of track out there. We tried to get after it, but we missed on what we were trying to do, and then we trashed some parts trying to make the car do what it didn't want to do. The forecast for tomorrow is pretty brutal, but who knows. Maybe it won't be as hot as they're saying and we can pick up a few hundredths. We're sure going to try."