HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Not surprisingly, where your team is located in the Nextel Cup Series' owner standings determines your feelings about NASCAR's current rule locking the top-35 owners into each race's starting lineup.

As soon as the checkered flag falls on Sunday's season finale Ford 400 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, most owners who are outside the top 35 won't need a calculator to figure out how dreadful the emotional lead-up to Speedweeks 2008 will be.

In 2007, beginning with the sixth race of the season, the current top-35 owners were locked into the 43-car lineup. At the beginning of the season, the previous year's top 35 was been used to lock in the lineup for the first five races.

The same system may or may not be in place in 2008.

"Following the season, we'll sit down and evaluate all our procedures and how they affect our competitors, as we always do," NASCAR spokesman Kerry Tharp said Sunday morning. "We'll determine if any adjustments are warranted, at that time."

Thus, Eddie Wood, co-owner of the No. 21 Ford fielded by Wood Brothers/JTG Racing, which will probably be the first car on the outside of the top 35 at the end of this season, assumes the week-to-week, if not minute-to-minute fact of having to qualify each weekend as "something you just can't get away from" is something that isn't going away.

"If you ever raced in this series, it's the most aggravating thing you'll ever do," Wood said. "It's the most aggravating, mind-boggling, depressing -- every word you can think of.

"You wake up thinking about it and you go to bed thinking about it, because if you're not careful, it'll just consume everything you do -- because when you get right down to it, everything you do depends on it.

"It would do everybody who's in this garage good to go through it one time -- though I don't want anyone to go through it, but you would appreciate the better times, or when things are going well for you.

"Because being out of the top 35 is about as bad as it gets."

Wood said Saturday he's unsure of the exact combination driver lineup for his car next season, though its sponsorship package is mostly in place. Wood's car has spent most of this season outside the top 35, where it fell following the second race, after Ken Schrader finished 35th at Daytona and 36th at California.

Bill Elliott, the 1988 Cup champion, is in Wood's car this weekend, as he has been 19 other times this season since he had a past champion's provisional starting position as a hedge against the car not qualifying -- as it did at Talladega and Richmond in the spring.

Bill Davis Racing's No. 22 Toyota, driven by Dave Blaney, has alternated the hot seat position with the Woods' car from the mid-point of the season. Each has actually had the notable achievement of racing their way back into the top 35, after falling out, twice. (Continued)