Two-time Formula One champion Fernando Alonso of Renault won the Singapore Grand Prix, the first night race in F1.
The Spaniard started 15th on the grid Sunday and posted his 20th Grand Prix victory. He finished ahead of Williams' Nico Rosberg and McLaren's Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton extended his championship lead to seven points.
Felipe Massa of Ferrari started from the pole and was undone by a pit stop in which he drove away with the gasoline hose attached to his car.
Less than an hour after Juan Pablo Montoya celebrated his first NASCAR Sprint Cup pole, it was taken away from him because of a technical violation.
NASCAR spokesman Ramsey Poston said Montoya's fast lap was disqualified because a postqualifying inspection discovered his rear shock absorbers exceeded the maximum gas pressure allowed.
That moved two-time reigning Cup champion Jimmie Johnson up to the pole, with Montoya's No. 42 Chip Ganassi Racing Dodge moved to 42nd in the 43-car field for Sunday's race at Kansas Speedway.
It was a blow to Montoya, 24th in the season points and struggling most of the year to be competitive.
A team spokesperson said Ganassi officials were "evaluating the situation" and would have no comment until Saturday.
Before NASCAR's announcement, a delighted Montoya said, "It's huge. There's times where it's getting darker and cooling down and you run at the end and all of a sudden you pick up a half a second and you're up there. But we were in the middle of the pack and the track didn't really change that much. We were genuinely fast."
But, with his lap of 172.150 mph disallowed, Johnson's 172.007 gave him his fifth pole of the season and 18th of his career.
Matt Kenseth, another of the Chasers, moved up to third, but none of the other 10 were able to break into the top 10 and six of the contenders wound up 27th or worse.
"It was a very, very good effort for us," Johnson said before finding out he was on the pole.
"Everybody knows how important track position is. I thought that the 18 (Kyle Busch), the 99 (Carl Edwards) and the 31 (Jeff Burton), I thought some of those guys were much stronger than they posted today in qualifying. I thought they were better than that in practice. I was shocked to see some of those guys on the right side of the (timing) screen and at the bottom of it.
"But this is just one day of three and the important day is Sunday. It doesn't mean it's a layup weekend where we pick up points on the other Chase competitors, but every little bit helps."
Among the Chase competitors, after Montoya's disqualification, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was 11th, an ailing Jeff Gordon qualified 13th, Greg Biffle, winner of the first two events of the 10-race Chase, was 18th and Clint Bowyer 24th.
The disappointments were Busch in 27th, Denny Hamlin 30th, Edwards 36th, Kevin Harvick 38th, Burton 39th and Tony Stewart 41st.
Biffle was just one of a number of unhappy drives after his qualifying run on the slick 1.5-mile oval.
"We were hoping for a little bit better that that," said Biffle, teammate of Kenseth, Edwards, 13th-place David Ragan and 17th-place Jamie McMurray at Roush Fenway Racing. "We've just got something wrong with our cars here, all of us do, the whole group. I guess we've got one more day to figure it out."
The disappointed Stewart, seventh in the standings and hoping push his way into contention with eight races left in the Chase, couldn't explain his poor qualifying effort.
"We've been decent here," he said. "We've been decent all the way up until that qualifying run right there. I don't know what happened there. Something must have happened. We were decent in practice this morning, for sure."
AJ Allmendinger lost his ride at Red Bull Racing on Tuesday, and it wasn't clear if the team will let him finish out the final eight races of season.
Allmendinger is in his second season driving the No. 84 Toyota, but Red Bull opted not to renew his contract for the 2009 season. The team also pulled him from the car for the two-day test session that began Tuesday at Lowe's Motor Speedway.
Mike Skinner is testing the car in Allmendinger's place. Allmendinger is still listed on the entry sheet for this weekend's race at Kansas Speedway, and Red Bull general manager Jay Frye did not immediately return a call for comment about the status of the team.
"AJ is a talented driver and we really enjoyed working with him," Frye said in a statement. "He's come a long way in just two years and we wish him nothing but the best."
Allmendinger moved from the now-defunct Champ Car Series to NASCAR before last season, and struggled as he and Red Bull adapted to the Sprint Cup Series. He got off to a slow start again this year, and Frye temporarily pulled him from the car to give Skinner, a veteran, a chance to assess the program.
Since returning to the car in April, Allmendinger has shown steady improvement but has not been able to get the car off the top-35 bubble. The No. 84 is currently ranked 34th in car owner points, just barely inside the window that guarantees it a starting spot in the field each week.
Despite Allmendinger's progress, Red Bull's Austria-based executives are believed to favor former Formula One driver Scott Speed and want him in the Cup Series next season.
Red Bull has spent considerable money developing Speed, who washed out of F1 but was sent back to the U.S. to learn stock cars. He's been solid in the Truck Series and developmental ARCA Series, and is believed to be in line to replace Allmendinger in the No. 84 next season.
Speed, who is participating in this week's test at Lowe's, could also drive seven Cup races this year and retain his rookie status for 2009.
Allmendinger, meanwhile, is believed to be a candidate to replace Reed Sorenson in the No. 41 for Chip Ganassi Racing. Sorenson is moving on to Gillett Evernham Motorsports next year, and was replaced Tuesday at the test by Jeremy Mayfield.
Steady rain that began Friday night and expectations that it would continue through Saturday with Tropical Storm Hanna moving in forced NASCAR to postpone Saturday night's Sprint Cup Series race at Richmond International Raceway.
The Chevrolet 400, which will finalize the field of 12 drivers who will be eligible to compete for the 2008 series championship, is now scheduled for 1 p.m. Sunday.
"We just felt this was the right thing to do," NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter said, adding that the decision was made after consultations with emergency officials in the area who warned that besides heavy rain, the storm was expected to bring high wind on Saturday.
"Tomorrow's going to be a tough day," track president Doug Fritz said, based on the forecasts. "Sometimes there's hope and sometimes there's not. This is one of those moving targets. ... We're still looking for two days of great racing, all crammed into one now."
The Nationwide Series race scheduled for Friday night was moved to Sunday at 7 p.m.
NASCAR said the field for both races will be set based on driver's standings and that the garage will be closed and the cars impounded from Friday night until 7:30 a.m. on Sunday.
The postponements are particularly bad news for rookie sensation Joey Logano, who was scheduled to make his debut in NASCAR's premier series driving for Joe Gibbs Racing. Because qualifying was washed out, he didn't get a chance to make the field.
"I can't change the weather, so I just go with it," said Logano, who will replace the departing Tony Stewart in Gibbs' No. 20 next season.
Fritz said the hundreds of motor homes already in place on the grounds of the track will be allowed to stay, even though there are no activities planned at the track on Saturday.
It was the number of fans that come from far away that made the decision hard, he said.
"You've got to balance the fans and obviously the uncertainty of the weather," he said. "That's where we were when we made this decision. ... We really pushed to get the races in as scheduled and at some point you've got to make the decision that it's not going to happen."
The Sprint Cup Series race will be televised on ESPN, Hunter said, and the Nationwide Series event will be televised on ESPN2. The start of that race will depend on how quickly the grandstands can be cleared following the Sprint Cup race to allow other ticket-holders in.