No more. Few drivers are even thinking much about Friday's qualifying for the EA Sports 500.

With passing during the Winston Cup races on the 2.66-mile, high-banked speedway now a lap-by-lap phenomenon, it appears to make little difference where in the 43-car field a driver starts.

Last October, with some new aerodynamic rules required by NASCAR, there were 49 lead changes in the 188-lap race. Dale Earnhardt, racing at Talladega for the last time, went from 18th to first in the last five laps on the way to his final Winston Cup victory before he was killed in February.

The entire race was characterized by drivers seesawing from back to front and front to back in a two- and three-wide racing mosaic.

Tony Stewart finished 27th in last year's race, but came back in April and finished second to Bobby Hamilton in another wild event that saw 37 lead changes.

Stewart isn't planning on doing anything heroic in qualifying here.

"We'll qualify in the back and do what we normally do," he said. "We'll ride around in the back for three-quarters of the race and then we'll try to race the last quarter."

Ken Schrader said he feels the same way about qualifying. Like most of the other drivers, he was hoping NASCAR would make some changes to aerodynamics to spread the cars out some in the race.

"But with the rules left like they are, at least you can go race on Sunday," he said. "I'm excited about that.

"Don't get me wrong; we'll still try to qualify. We're making an effort. We're not just going to ignore Friday. We'll come up with whatever we can."

When practice beings Friday, everybody will be watching Stewart to see what he will do about a new rule requiring drivers to wear either a HANS or Hutchens device.

Stewart was NASCAR's lone holdout on trying such restraints, citing claustrophobia and questions about their effectiveness. The mandate now takes the issue out of his hands, and Stewart isn't very happy about it.

"I want to wear something, but I haven't found anything yet that I'm comfortable with," he said. "It's not that I don't want to wear it, and I'm not being bullheaded about this, but there is nothing right now that I'm comfortable wearing inside the race car."

Before Wednesday, the use of a restraint system was encouraged by NASCAR, but not required. Still, 42 of 43 drivers routinely wore one of the two available devices -- a factor NASCAR said played a part in making it a rule.

Widespread use of the devices, which limit movement of a driver's head and neck upon impact, began shortly after seven-time Winston Cup champion Earnhardt died of a fractured skull in the season-opening Daytona 500. Neither Earnhardt nor three other NASCAR drivers who died of head or neck injuries in the preceding nine months was wearing a restraining device.

Stewart has eliminated the bulky, over-the-shoulder HANS device as an option and has only tried the less-cumbersome Hutchens device once, during a test session here in August.

He found its presence a distraction and decided that wasn't a safe state of mind to have when driving at speeds close to 200.

NASCAR said it tried several times in the past few days to contact Stewart and discuss the mandate with him, finally calling car owner Joe Gibbs to explain its decision.

"We expect them to comply with the rules," NASCAR vice president George Pyne said. "Joe understands what we are trying to do and that it is the right thing for our industry, which Tony is a big part of. We fully expect that Tony will race this weekend with the device on."

But Pyne admitted NASCAR has no penalty on the books yet should Stewart fail to comply with the mandate. And there's always the possibility that the independent and outspoken Stewart could attempt to get into his car without one of the restraints.

Stewart says discomfort from a new safety device could be a terrible distraction, particularly at Talladega -- NASCAR's longest, fastest and one of its most dangerous ovals.