Another Long road home for Carl.

Winston Cup Raybestos Rookie of the Year candidate Carl Long (pictured in 2000) failed to qualify for the second weekend in a row after scraping the outside wall on his Bud Pole Qualifying run yesterday leaving his Mansion Motorsports team with another early ride back to base.

Perennial Winston Cup underdog Carl Long began 2002 with an ambitious three-team assault on the 2002 Raybestos Rookie of the Year crown. Two races in to what is Long's most concerted stab yet at the Winston Cup Series and he has yet to see the green flag on race day after failing to qualify for the Subway 400 at the North Carolina Speedway.

Long entered the weekend in a state of flux after failing to make the cut for the Daytona 500 and watching his proposed deal with Price Motorsports dissolve. Forced to switch from Mansion Motorsports Dodge one of the team's short-track Ford's didn't help as Dodge claimed the top four times in first practice at Rockingham; Long was slowest of all heading into Bud Pole qualifying on Friday afternoon.

All hopes of making the race disappeared for good when Long scraped the turn two wall on his first qualifying lap. Sheet metal began rubbing on his right rear tyre affecting the rest of the run and Long finished the session in 46th and last place.

"I got it a little bit too loose qualifying," marked the driver who failed to qualify for nine races last year with the No.85 team. "We changed some things and I really don't know why it did what it did. We had a different set of tires and it was a little bit freer.

"It was qualifying. I was all in the gas coming off turn two and it hung out and got into the wall. It was history then. It moved the rear end over and we couldn't make it up. Hopefully we'll have the Dodge back at Atlanta and I won't be as far behind the eight-ball as I was here."