(Ian Tocher photos)

Numbers 17 and 18 qualifiers Raymond Matos and Melanie Troxel were inserted into the race-day mix as alternates to Chip King, who broke his turbocharged ’69 Daytona after qualifying 11th, and 15th-place Pat Musi, who suffered a serious top-end crash after going 6.14 at 238.05 mph in his nitrous-assisted ’09 Stratus during the opening round of qualifying on Friday.

Musi was taken to a local hospital immediately after the accident, but was transferred by ambulance Friday evening to Athens (GA) Regional Medical Center, where surgery to repair and stabilize one broken and one cracked lower vertebrae was scheduled for Sunday morning.

Veteran Pat Musi qualified his Nitrous powered car in this shot and then later crashed on the ttop end. (Ian Tocher photo)

His longtime crew chief, Robert Hallberg, explained Musi was distracted when his right glove got caught as he reached for the parachutes, and when he stepped too hard on the brakes it shot the car across from the left lane to sideswipe the right guardwall before shooting back across the track for a hard three-quarter frontal impact with the left wall.

“He’s in a lot of pain and he’s not too happy right now,” Hallberg said Saturday afternoon at the track. “They’re going to put some titanium in him and the doctors said it’s a pretty routine procedure, so he should be fine.”

After a third and final qualifying session, Saturday also saw the first round of eliminations for the Pro Mod series, with Hoover opening the race with a win over a traction-challenged Ray Commisso. The next pair up featured R2B2 Racing owner and number-five starter Roger Burgess in his turbocharged ’53 Corvette against Scott Ray driving a supercharged version of the same car.