Texas rain leaves Parker blue.

Hank Parker Jr. drove his No. 36 GNC Live Well Dodge Intrepid to a 14th-place finish in Saturday's rain-shortened O'Reilly 300 NASCAR Busch Series (NBS) event at Texas Motor Speedway (TMS).

The start of Saturday's event was delayed by more than three-and-a-half hours due to the wet weather. Parker's crew finally uncovered their car, revealing its special blue, black and orange paint scheme to the crowd at TMS just after 3 p.m. CT.

The No. 36 entry carried a special design to promote Cytodyne Technologies' Xenadrine EFX, a new product available at GNC Live Well retail locations.Parker also sported a new uniform and helmet, both bearing the Xenadrine logos and colours.

Rolling off from the 24th position, Parker had the unenviable task of starting in the outside row. With the repaving that has been done to the track surface at TMS, most drivers felt like there would only be a low groove suitable for racing. That meant that Parker would do his best to find a way to get down to the bottom of the racetrack as quickly as possible.

On the first lap, rookie Stuart Kirby spun in his No. 34 machine, bringing out the first caution flag of the day. Parker, who had been stuck in the outside lane for most of the lap, dropped to 26th position before coming around to take the caution flag.

The race restarted on lap 7, with Parker passing the No. 07 of Ken Schrader to take over 25th position on lap 12. Five laps later, the No. 36 got by the No. 48 of Kenny Wallace to claim 24th position. After passing the No. 1 entry of Jimmy Spencer on lap 21, the No. 36 took over the 23rd spot.

On lap 30, Parker passed the No. 29 of Kevin Harvick to assume 22nd position, where he remained until NASCAR threw a caution flag on lap 42 to allow the teams to pit and check their tyre wear. When Parker brought his race machine to pit road, the crew topped off the fuel tank, made a track bar adjustment and put on four new tyres, adjusting the air pressure in both front tyres on Parker's car.

Restarting the race in 23rd position on lap 45, Parker made less than two circuits around the 1.5-mile TMS track before the No. 26 of Lyndon Amick spun in turn two and hit the outside retaining wall. As Amick's damaged machine slid down the racetrack, the No. 99 of Michael Waltrip hit Amick's car, flipping Waltrip's machine onto its roof and bringing out the third caution flag of the event.

Track safety workers quickly extinguished a small fire that erupted in the engine compartment of Waltrip's machine, with Waltrip emerging unscathed from the window of his upside-down car.

It took a number of laps for safety workers to remove the damaged machines of Waltrip and Amick from the race surface. During the cleanup period, raindrops began to again fall on the TMS facility.

After waving off one restart on lap 56, NASCAR officials gave competitors the green flag on lap 66, with Parker being shown in 21st position.

What followed was the longest stretch of green flag racing that the drivers would see during the event. Based on lap times, it appeared that Parker's Dodge was faster on longer runs. On lap 82, Parker moved into the top-20 when Todd Bodine brought his No. 92 entry to pit road.

The No. 36 then took over 19th position from the No. 23 of Scott Wimmer on lap 86, picking off the 18th spot from the No. 4 of Mike Wallace four laps later. On lap 92, the 17th position went to Parker when he passed the No. 47 of Shane Hmiel. Eight laps later, Parker radioed his crew, telling them that raindrops were again hitting his windshield.

A spin by the No. 98 of Kasey Kahne brought out the fourth and final caution flag of the day on lap 107. With almost all of the leaders electing to pit, the No. 36 crew had some decisions to make. After some discussion, crew chief Gary Cogswell and Parker made the choice to put "scuffs," tyres that had already been run for several laps, on the car. The thinking was that the scuffed tyres would "come in" more quickly, giving the car better handling in a shorter amount of time.

Other than changing tyres and adding one can of fuel, the team made no other adjustments to the GNC Live Well Dodge. Thanks to fast pit work by the GNC crew, Parker returned to the track in 15th position. Mike Wallace had stayed on the track when the leaders pitted, hoping that the weather would keep the race under caution and allow him to claim the win. When it appeared that the race might go back to green flag conditions, Wallace ducked onto pit road for service, moving Parker up to 14th position.

NASCAR officials planned to restart the race on lap 111, but enough precipitation was falling to cause officials to rethink that decision. With the competitors slowly circling the track under yellow flag conditions, the rainfall began to increase in volume and intensity.

On lap 116, NASCAR was forced to bring out the red flag, stopping the race due to the weather. When it became apparent that it would take several hours to dry the race surface enough to continue the event, NASCAR elected to call the race around 6:30 p.m. CT, giving the victory to the No. 37 team of driver Jeff Purvis.

After the event, Parker had mixed feelings about his team's finishing position. "I'm happy to have gotten a top-15 finish, but I'm disappointed that we didn't get the last 80 laps in," Parker said. "We had a car that would have found its way into the top-10 if we'd have gone the distance. I can't say enough about how hard this team worked this weekend to give me a car I could work with. "

"We were scratching our heads after happy hour on Friday," Parker said. "We were fast when we tested here back in March, but we couldn't seem to get out of our own way in practice this weekend. (Crew chief) Gary Cogswell and these guys really put a lot of thought into figuring out what this Dodge needed, and it showed today. I'm glad we got a decent finish, but the rain stopped us from showing what we were capable of."

The 14th-place result moves Parker up two spots to 22nd in the NBS drivers' points standings, while team owner Scott Welliver now holds the 23rd spot in NBS owners' points.

Parker and his Welliver-Jesel Motorsports crew turn their attention to the Nashville Superspeedway, site of the seventh event of the 2002 NBS season. With the NASCAR Winston Cup series competitors heading to Martinsville, the Nashville event will be the first "stand-alone" race of the year for the Busch Series.