Just when that No. 01 Pontiac Grand Prix team thought it had gotten the best of Richmond International Raceway, the vengeful little track struck back.

In May, during practice before the season's first Winston Cup race at RIR, driver Jerry Nadeau crashed hard and is still trying to recover from multiple injuries. The wreck sent chills down the backs of everyone in the NASCAR community, with Nadeau having to be cut out of the car.

On Friday, when the Winston Cup cars returned to the three-quarter mile race track, the 01 got bit again. Just as soon as practice began, replacement driver Mike Skinner went spinning and crashed the Pontiac. The team had to move to a backup car hours before qualifying, and they needed to get a new engine from Hendrick Motorsports.

No worries, though. This team had been through hell before. They knew their way back up, and they showed everyone in attendance with a 125.792 mph lap in time trials that put this car on the pole for Saturday night's race -- at the very track where Nadeau's horrific wreck took place four months prior.

Finally, it seemed, the 01 had caught a break here.

And then came post-qualifying practice. Skinner said he ran through some oil, went spinning and smashed the wall at the very spot that Nadeau had hit during practice in May. There was silence among the crew.

"When I saw Mike hit the same wall Jerry hit, I thought I was dreaming," said Ryan Pemberton, crew chief on the 01. "I couldn't believe what I just saw. As soon as I knew Mike was OK, I didn't know if I should cry or laugh, but I decided to laugh because I didn't want people to make fun of me crying."

If it sounds like Pemberton was making light of the situation, it's because he was. Sure, the team is now going to have to voluntarily fall to the back of the pack just after leading the field to the green flag -- a penalty for moving to a backup car -- but Skinner's OK. And this team has learned to see the bright side of everything.

"Well, we recovered from the first (problem this weekend) pretty good. If we can recover half that good tomorrow night, we're going to be in good shape," Skinner said. "It's not easy to recover from something like that. The first car that we tore up, I blame myself for. And I don't know that I made any mistakes -- it just came around. But this car here, there was no question as to what happened. We were the fastest car and we went in there and hit somebody's oil."

Makes you wonder if Pemberton didn't laugh and cry. The way this weekend is going, everytime something good happens, something bad has followed -- and vice versa.

The team was already feeling at least a little distracted when it drove into Richmond on Thursday. The fact that this was the site of the crash that has kept this team's driver out for four months was not lost on anyone. Sure, Nadeau's doing better. In fact, he visited the folks at Medical College of Virginia this weekend to thank them for his treatment.

Still, the memories of last May were fresh in everyone's minds. And when Skinner went spinning in the first practice, it was as if the track was trying to tell team owner Jay Frye something.

"I asked Jerry if we ought to paint this car a different color when we come to Richmond," Skinner said.

"You didn't make it through practice and I didn't make it a lap before I tore the hell out of it," Skinner told Nadeau.

Nadeau just looked at Skinner and laughed. What else could go wrong?

Plenty, it turns out. But first, the track wanted to tease the guys a little. It had already brought them to their knees. Why not pull them back up before delivering the next whack?

When Skinner took his backup car onto the track for qualifying, he wondered about a couple of things. First of all, he had drawn the 29th qualifying slot in the draw. His team opted to wait and go last so it would have more time to work on the car. He wondered if, as speeds were slowing, that was a mistake.

He also wondered if the team should have kept the engine out of the primary car. He had liked that engine -- not that he'd had that much time pushing it to get attached. Still, he wondered if maybe switching motors wasn't also a mistake.

One lap into the qualifying effort, though, all of that second guessing went out the window. The rig was flying and he knew he was in the midst of something special.

"It started out kind of rough," Skinner said. "We hadn't made a full lap on the track before we tore our U.S. Army Pontiac all to pieces. I still don't know what happened. We really didn't do anything different (on the backup), the setups are very similar. We got the backup car going and the thing ran second in practice.

"The Hendrick guys put a different engine in it. I almost said, 'leave that engine in it,' but they were a little bit afraid to race with that engine. I can't say enough about the engine. It ran awesome. We saw a lot of cars getting loose in qualifying and our car had been a little tight in practice. We thought maybe it would come to us, and darned if it didn't."

Darned if there wasn't a roar from the crowd when Skinner's lap turned out to be the best. Everyone was so happy about the turnaround that they started joking about next year. After all, Boris Said, a replacement driver for this team at Sonoma, won the pole for that race. Skinner, the fill-in for now, won the pole here. Nadeau, everyone seems to believe, will be back in the car next year. So who's going to pilot the car in the Bud Shootout, the exhibition at Daytona pitting pole winners against one another?

"Maybe we'll have an 02 and 03," Skinner joked.

In the press room, after winning the pole, he talked about his unemployment status. He said he had a couple of deals in the works and thought maybe the pole-winning effort would help his resume.

"This unemployment stuff is something else," he said. "This is two poles for this car this year and both guys driving it were unemployed. Imagine that. It's working out pretty good for us so far. We have a lot of positive things going on for us next year and we should know something in a couple of weeks. I just can't thank Jay Frye and all the guys who own this race team at MB2 for giving me this opportunity.

"I have to thank Jerry Nadeau for giving me an opportunity. I think he was my biggest cheerleader when they decided to make a driver change. He endorsed me. He said, 'Put Mike Skinner in the car.' He's called me every week and supported me. We've run better than our finishes.

"We're looking at a couple of opportunities in the Winston Cup series, but we're really looking hard at the Truck Series again. There are a few opportunities coming up that we might get involved with. We haven't committed to anybody totally on anything right now. We're just kind of waiting to see where the chips fall. Days like today don't hurt those credentials."

The problem was, "today" wasn't over. Skinner still had to go back out for another practice. He's struggled in practices all season. When he ended up hitting the same wall where Nadeau hit, though, the struggles seemed to take on another meaning. This team might've been cursed.

Skinner climbed out of the car OK, though. He looked frustrated. But who wouldn't have been? One thing he didn't look, though, was defeated.

"Well, you know, when something like this happens, what do you do?" Skinner said. "We know what happened, we hit oil. Do you quit? No. You get another (car) out and you put a good engine in it -- hopefully they can put this engine in it -- and put the same set-up under it and hopefully it'll be awesome. And, maybe we can come from the back."

This team has been dealt a lot of blows in 2003. It's still running, though. It may not have any victories, but it would be hard to call them losers.

Rupen Fofaria is a freelance writer living in Chicago and a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at rfofaria@espnspecial.com.