Coors Light Pole qualifying for the Samsung 500 at the Texas Motor Speedway had two major talking points. The first was Dale Earnhardt Jr taking his first pole position for the #88 Hendrick Motorsports team and the second was the huge crash suffered by series rookie Michael McDowell.
Earnhardt Jr led the field with a best time of 28.286-seconds (190.907mph) and was the only driver to break the 190mph average speed barrier around the 1.5-mile Texas speedbowl while McDowell walked away from the biggest single car accident seen in many years, a crash that the new generation ‘Car of Today' stood up to extremely well.
Earnhardt Jr was one of more than 30 drivers who took their qualifying laps after McDowell's crash, which caused qualifying to be delayed by more than an hour while track officials repaired the SAFER barriers that suffered damage following McDowell's head-on impact with the wall in turns one and two.
After performing well on his Cup debut last weekend in Martinsville McDowell was starting his final qualifying lap when his #00 Michael Waltrip Racing Toyota snapped sideways on the entrance to turn one. The car then careered head-on into the SAFER barriers at over 180mph before flipping onto its roof and barrel rolling through turn two and down onto the apron on the entrance to the back-straight, catching fire as it rotated.
To the amazement of many drivers, a lot of whom were watching qualifying from pit road while waiting to take their run, McDowell was able to extricate himself and walk, albeit stiffly, to the waiting ambulance.
While McDowell will be starting from the back of the 43-car grid on Sunday Earnhardt Jr will be sharing the front row with Carl Edwards with Kyle Busch and Ryan Newman on row two, ensuing all four competing manufacturers have a car on the first two rows.
Jimmie Johnson, who won the most recent Cup race at Texas, will start fifth with practice pacesetter David Reutimann leading the list of ‘go or go home' drivers in sixth place.
![Carl Edwards - Office Depot Ford [pic credit: Ford media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/293226.jpg)
