[More Pictures]

Saturday, 29th March 2008

Gordon inches closer to Martinsville pole record.

Jeff Gordon continued his mastery of Martinsville Speedway on Friday afternoon by taking pole position for Sunday's Goody's Cool Orange 500.

It was Gordon's seventh pole win at Martinsville, matching his seven race victories on the historic half-mile track. The pole win left him one short of Darrell Waltrip's record eight poles

Gordon turned in a near-perfect lap of 19.666 seconds (96.288 mph) around the 0.526-mile track in his #24 Hendrick Motorsport Chevrolet to win the pole. Joe Gibbs Racing's Denny Hamlin captured the outside pole with a lap of 19.775 seconds (95.757 mph).

Advertisement [Go Advertisement Free]

“We've been close to poles, we've won poles here, but rarely have we put a whole lap together at both ends of the race track the we way we did today,” said Gordon after capturing his 65th career pole. “It impressed me, I'll be honest, to run that type of a lap. It tells you the great job the crew did today.”

Hamlin was obviously pleased with his qualifying effort, but felt it could have been better.

“It was a good lap for us. I missed my marks on my first lap and that typically was about one-tenth faster than what our second laps were,” said Hamlin. “I felt like we were good. It was just a little driver error there and had to kind of regroup in that second lap and kind of pull something at least salvageable together and it was good enough for where we ended up. It just tells us we have a car that is that versatile is going to be good for us on Sunday.”

Rookie Aric Almirola surprised the field by nailing down the third starting spot in Sunday's race, followed by David Ragan, and Jamie McMurray. McMurray was a relieved man after successfully making it through his first qualifying session since his #26 Roush-Fenway Racing team dropped out of the top 35 in NASCAR owner points.

Rounding out the top 10 were Kasey Kahne in sixth, Ken Schrader in an excellent seventh in BAM Racing's first outing in a Toyota, Kyle Busch in eighth, Tony Stewart in ninth and Jimmie Johnson in 10th.

Related Images

[Top of Article]