Jimmie Johnson wins Daytona qualifying race

Reporting from Daytona Beach, Fla. — 

He drove a backup car that hadn’t taken any laps of practice.

His crew chief mixed up the schedule and showed up uncharacteristically late to the morning drivers meeting.

You’d forgive the No. 48 team for being a bit discombobulated going into the Gatorade Duels at Daytona.

But they weren’t. Not even a little bit.

Four-time defending Sprint Cup champion Jimmie Johnson won the first 150-mile qualifying race Thursday afternoon by a margin of .005 seconds. Kasey Kahne won the second race, breaking up the Hendrick Motorsports party. The top three qualifiers for the 52nd running of the Daytona 500 will be Hendrick Chevrolets with Mark Martin starting from the pole, Dale Earnhardt Jr. next to him on the outside pole and Johnson starting third.

“I hope it says that we can win the Daytona 500, and to take us seriously,” Johnson said. “I don’t think I’ve been proving myself on [restrictor-plate tracks] since the COT has been around. . . . I think things are coming together.”

Johnson’s margin of victory over Kevin Harvick was the second-closest finish in a Duel at Daytona since the advent of the electronic timing system in 1993.

Kahne’s margin in the second race wasn’t much greater -- he edged Tony Stewart by .014 seconds, after Stewart got a push from Juan Pablo Montoya on the outside.

“If you beat that guy, you’ve done something on that day,” Kahne said of Stewart. “He always seems to be at the front.”

Max Papis and Michael McDowell were the best-finishing among drivers not locked into the Daytona 500 in the first Duel and thus secured spots into Sunday’s race.

“I’m speechless,” said Papis, in his second year of Cup racing. “Those guys out there, they are the best of the best in the world. When you can compete with them, when you have someone like Mark Martin coming to you and saying, I’m really happy that you made the show, it means the world to me.”

Mike Bliss and Scott Speed transferred into the Daytona 500 from the second race. Michael Waltrip, Bobby Labonte, Bill Elliott and Joe Nemechek got into the race based on their qualifying times.

Waltrip spent a harrowing hour and a half after wrecking out of the first duel. His qualifying time in Saturday’s time trials wasn’t fast enough to get him into Sunday’s race unassisted.

Expecting this to be his final Daytona 500, the two-time Daytona 500 winner nervously rooted for Speed and Labonte to race their way into Sunday’s show. He needed one of the two drivers to do so, or he wouldn’t qualify.

Speed’s 14th-place finish saved Waltrip. In appreciation, Waltrip hugged Speed as the two crossed paths off the stage in the media center.

“I’m glad I was able to get him in that race,” Speed said. “The big man back there deserves to be in it.”

Johnson last won the Daytona 500 in 2006, the year he won his first Sprint Cup championship.

Crew chief Chad Knaus sat at home then, suspended for a rules violation. At the start of every year since then the priority of one of the most successful teams in NASCAR history has been to win a Daytona 500 with Knaus at the track. They haven’t since.

Knaus thinks this car can do it.

tganguli@orlandosentinel.com