Sonata Hard Starts then Pings then No Problem

[ryanp37]

Hello All,
I'm hoping I might get some thoughts from you concerning a strange problem that occured with my 2004 Sonata V-6 this morning (68 k Miles). I went out to start my car this morning, gave it a crank and it did not want to turn over. I tried again and actually tried giving it gas at the same time and the car did in fact start. All this is very out of the ordinary as I have never had this problem before. The strange thing was that once it was started, there was a very loud clicking noise as the car ran coming from under the hood. It almost sounded as if there was no oil in it or perhaps some sort of a belt sound. The strangest thing is that I shut the car off and started it again and everything was back to normal. Specifically, the car started up fine and ran fine after this initial occurence. I have started my car at least 10 times since this happened and driven it and no problems at all. Do you folks have any thoughts as to what might have caused this. Is it a matter of time until something spontaneously combusts here? If so, any ideas what that might be?

Thanks so much,
Paul R.