Kyle Petty must have been pretty happy. At least as relieved as Ryan Newman was disappointed.

The Dodge drivers might have been the two most effected by Friday's qualifying rain-out at New Hampshire International Speedway. Petty has proved to be one of the worst qualifiers this season as Newman has asserted himself once again as the best. But with rain forcing the starting order to be set by points, Newman will start outside the top 15 for only the fourth time this year. Petty will start -- and that's good enough for now.

"I'm just happy to be racing," Petty said. "We'll see how the rain shapes up (the rest of the weekend)."

NASCAR's system of provisionals, a mechanism by which a driver can start a race even if he doesn't qualify among the top 43, is complicated and confusing. The gist, however, goes like this. The top 36 qualifiers make it in the race based on time. Those who fall outside of that are thrown into a mix, ranked according to how many championship owner's points their car owner has and the top seven from that group fill out the 43-car field.

A driver is given four provisions at the start of the year and, for every eight races he attempts to qualify, is given one more throughout the season until he hits a ceiling at eight. At this point in the year, Petty had earned six provisionals -- but used every one of them. The next qualifying effort outside the top 36 would mean his missing the race. That almost happened at Daytona two weekends ago -- but he snuck in with one of the final spots. He snuck in this weekend, too, and will start 35th according to points standings.

"Hopefully it won't rain tomorrow, because we'll need some (track) time," Petty said. "I think we learned a lot from last year, when we sort of struggled here, so we'll see how that translates."

In this race last season, Petty used a provisional to make the field. Although he has touted improvements the team has made in its qualifying efforts, he did acknowledge feeling a certain amount of pressure when it comes to time trials. On Friday, Mother Nature helped him avoided that difficulty altogether.

On the flip side of the coin is Newman; robbing him of the opportunity to qualify is robbing him of his best chance to shine. Newman led all drivers with five poles last season and, midway through this year, could beat that mark. He has qualified inside the top five 11 times in 18 tries.

He's gotten so good at qualifying that his competitors recognize him as the best: Recently, Tony Stewart joked that his season might be a little bit better if he'd have Newman go out and run qualifying for him.

This week, Newman starts 16th as rain showed it's about the only thing that can derail his qualifying frolic.

Could he have beaten 16th?

"I don't know, but usually we do," a diplomatic Newman said. "It won't be that big of a deal, though, I don't think."

More than the prime starting track position he might have gotten, Newman will miss the opportunity to find the fastest line around the track two days before the race.

"From our perspective, there's a lot of things we could (have learned) today about the surface and the tire interaction that would carry over into race practice," Newman said. "Yes, it does take a different setup (from qualifying to the race), but there's a lot of common items with the racetrack: the tires, the groove. I've always said the qualifying line is the fast line, and it's going to be the fast line in the race, too. There's certain things you can carry over."

Rupen Fofaria is a beat writer for The Raleigh News & Observer and is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at rfofaria@espnspecial.com.