DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- With his Nationwide Series driver, Brad Keselowski, saying he wants to be in the Sprint Cup Series next season, JR Motorsports owner Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Friday he still loves the Nationwide Series but he's open to all options.

Earnhardt was the 1998 and '99 champion of what was then known as the Busch Series, driving for his family's Dale Earnhardt Inc. team. After partnering his team with Rick Hendrick this season, he's been considering moving his operation to Cup in 2010.

"Going into the Cup Series is going to be quite a challenge for anybody to find the kind of financial support that you need," Earnhardt said. "The Nationwide Series is still as exciting to me as it was when we first got into it. Although the parity and the makeup of the series changes it seems year to year, it's still an interesting series with a lot of great personalities and it's still fun for me. We've been able to bring Brad in and progress him through the series and he's got a great opportunity to move on and he'll hopefully be a fixture in this sport, as a whole, over the next several years -- and that's really what we wanted to achieve. Hopefully, we'll have that opportunity again with someone else once Brad has completed his cycle, if you will.

"I enjoy that. I enjoy kind of bringing people in and having a part in getting them there. So that's what's exiting about the series for me as an owner. It's easier to secure financial support for that series when you're talking about the entire sum of money that it takes to compete. It's a little bit of a challenge to convince corporate America why that series versus any other series. But nothing comes easy."

And that's certainly the case as NASCAR continues to consider bringing a version of the new Sprint Cup chassis to the Nationwide Series in some form, perhaps as early as next season.

"I don't know what the Nationwide cars will look like next year," Earnhardt said. "I haven't had any conversations with anyone in the sport about the car. I haven't had any diagrams or ideas or drafts in front of me to look at. So I'm just waiting in the wings like everybody else, I assume.

"I'm sure that we as a company sort of didn't turn our nose up at it but we really didn't involve ourselves any in the equation of developing the car. We have our budget worked out to where we can run this year with what we have but we don't have the money to develop this car. You'd be lucky to be able to do it just under $150,000 in just an early or pre-season development. So before you even run a race, you've spent a couple hundred thousand dollars and we do not have that as a company. So we can't involve ourselves in the development of it so we are sort of like everyone else, waiting on whoever that team is -- whether it will be RCR or Roush or whoever that is that will be a part of developing that car with NASCAR and building this car and seeing what kind of car they produce. Without a doubt I'm sure it'll be a safer race car [but] the car we have now in the Nationwide Series, in my opinion, is the ultimate race car."

Hendrick teammates at odds over qualifying

"Bitter" might not be the right way to describe it, but Hendrick Motorsports teammates Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson found themselves with opposite opinions after qualifying was rained-out for the third time in the last five weeks.

Gordon

The sun was out and the track was dry at Daytona on Friday, but qualifying was scrubbed due to having two Nationwide Series cars that hadn't completed their qualifying runs, 45 Sprint Cup cars to qualify and a narrow window of time before the Nationwide race was due to begin.

"I'll tell you what I will say about the 2.5-mile tracks -- I don't understand why we're doing two-lap qualifying. It's not necessary," Gordon said. "We can go out there and get up to speed in three-quarters of a lap that we run. Run one lap. That would cut back on the amount of time it takes.

"One of the problems we have here is that they look at it and say, 'Well, we need 3.5 hours to qualify all the cars.' That's just crazy how long it takes. I don't think the outcome would be a whole lot different. So I would just like to see us at here and Talladega just go to one-lap qualifying."

Johnson disagreed, saying it would make for confusion.

Johnson

"At moments like right now in trying to take care of the guys who needed to qualify on speed, we can come up with ideas, but we need consistency, in my opinion," Johnson said. "And to have it work at some tracks and not others, I think would just confuse us all the more, and the fan, for that matter. And then at some tracks you'd wish that it would work and why is it only on superspeedways?

"Pocono, there's an argument. It takes a long time to get around that race track. So I just think it would confuse things. But, yeah, you'd like to see us qualify, especially when the sun starts to come out and it's too small of a window of sun to get it in. So I see where the thought comes from, but I just think it would be tough."

Don't expect more foreign automakers soon

Other manufacturers may be welcome in NASCAR racing, but don't expect new entries into the top three touring series any time soon, says NASCAR chairman and CEO Brian France.

France said three weeks ago at Michigan that the sanctioning body was open to working with foreign automakers. Factory support to the sport from American automakers has diminished in a floundering economy, and recent Chrysler and General Motors reorganizations under government supervision have limited the manufacturers' ability to provide cash and technology to race teams.

Toyota currently competes in all three series -- Sprint Cup, Nationwide and Camping World Truck -- but France said bringing another foreign car maker into NASCAR racing would be a long-term project. Current rules require manufacturers to race cars built in the United States, as is Toyota's Camry.

"Our policy and our views haven't really changed," France said Friday at Daytona during his traditional mid-year meeting with the media. "Some of the opportunities for a new manufacturer to come into NASCAR probably have changed. Obviously, there are teams that were getting direct support or were affiliated with one manufacturer or another that are available now. So that is a fact.

"We have been talking, and we have routinely, because we are open, as we demonstrated with Toyota -- which worked well, under the right approach that's unique to NASCAR -- for a manufacturer to come in and compete at one of our national divisions. That policy remains open. It is not something that happens easily or overnight.

"...I do not anticipate -- there's absolutely nothing imminent that we will be announcing that somebody will be will be joining or any of that. But do I see more interest because there's more opportunity? Sure. We see that, and we're fielding the kinds of questions and evaluation that you would think under the circumstances."

Earnhardt concedes Chase is unlikely

Even if Earnhardt and his No. 88 team continue to improve their performances, Earnhardt concedes that qualifying of the Chase for the Sprint Cup will be a difficult proposition.

Earnhardt Jr.

"We have quite a ways to go to be able make the Chase," said Earnhardt, currently 19th in the Cup standings, 285 points behind 12th-place Juan Montoya. "We're still mathematically in it, but we're not trying to catch just one guy we're 200-and-some points behind.

"We're trying to catch four or five guys, and it's unrealistic to expect all those guys to have enough trouble, and for us to top-10 'em to death ain't going to get it done. We've got to run better, and even though we have improved, it seems, we still need to get better. To be able to drive up into the top three last week [at New Hampshire] was a lot of fun, but we need to be able to stay there once we get there.

"Making the Chase is the goal, but at the end of the year, when you're done racing at Homestead, and you run the last lap and you get out of the car, what kind of feeling do you want to have? The one I want to have is that we fixed it, that we've got something that we can feel good about and work on and get all our stuff ready for next year."

Battling the heat and humidity

A couple quick-hitting rain storms cooled temperatures at Daytona this weekend, but heat in the 90s and energy-sapping humidity has plagued the track. Yet two Sprint Cup drivers plan to double-dip on Saturday, racing 650 total miles in two events.

Busch

Defending Coke Zero 400 champion Kyle Busch will team up with Sprint Cup rookie of the year candidate Scott Speed in a Chip Ganassi Racing Daytona Prototype Lexus Riley sports car in the Brumos Porsche 250 Grand-Am Rolex Series race at 2 p.m. ET on Saturday afternoon, with practice and qualifying earlier in the day. Four hours later they'll compete in the 400-mile Sprint Cup race.

Former Grand-Am champions Jon Fogarty and Alex Gurney, who've teamed with Johnson in previous sports-car events, said they've been working hard on the cooling systems in their closed-cockpit cars, but Daytona in the summer is a daunting task.

"First off, I think it's great what they're doing, I like it that those guys are going to be in the race [and] I think they'll bring some attention and hopefully will put on a great show," Gurney said. "I expect them to be very quick. It will take some adjustment to drive the car, but we know from when Jimmie Johnson has run with us, he's just a class act all around and super fast and super focused.

"If those guys are anything like Jimmie, then we'll have a hard time. We love having Jimmie there. Obviously that will be great if we can get him back again for next year, for the 24 [Hours]."

Fogarty cited the heat as the stock-car drivers' greatest challenge.

Speed

"It's going to be brutal -- it's going to be tough," Fogarty said. "I know the Ganassi guys obviously have their cooling system figured out pretty well, but it's really all relative. It's still hotter than you-know-what inside that thing. Those guys are going to have to be careful. They'll have to make sure they don't develop any cramps and stay hydrated. That's going to be tough."

In typical NASCAR fashion, Speed's Cup crew chief Jimmy Elledge said his driver would have no trouble.

"He's an old Formula One guy, he knows what that's all about," Elledge said. "Those wine and cheese [sports-car] guys, they run 30-minute sprints with a mandatory lunch break. Our guys are used to running 500-mile races in cars that aren't that cool. I don't see them having a problem."

"There's nothing you can do [to prepare]," Fogarty said. "It literally would be tough to replicate the conditions of a Daytona prototype cockpit. Even if you could, you'd have to be a serious masochist to subject yourself to that. Just hydrate. It's going to be a one-day event [but] it's going to be a tough day, so just suck up for that one day and get through it and get the job done."

Gordon said the Pirelli tires used by the sports cars wouldn't create any issues for the stock cars, in his opinion.

"I haven't really thought about it a lot to be honest with you," Gordon said. "It's a good question but we won't know until [Saturday]. You know this track is always pretty hot and slick and those guys run pretty much around the bottom and I don't know, I don't think they are going to lay a ton of rubber down. So I don't think it's going to be a big issue, but we'll find out once we get out there.

"You know this place is kind of strange for putting rubber down on the track anyway -- it's not like most tracks because the radius of the corners is so big and it's fairly abrasive and that wears tires. I can't really say that it lays a lot of rubber down and if it does, it won't take us long to get the Goodyear rubber laid in there."

Sporting News Wire Service contributed to this report.