Talladega pole for Compton.

Stacy Compton (pictured here in 2000 livery) scored his first career Winston Cup pole position as Dodge's swept the top three positions in Bud Pole qualifying for the Talladega 500 at the fearsome 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway.

Dodge's Daytona form returned at Talladega with the top three starters in the season opening Daytona 500 taking the top three positions for Sunday's Talladega 500 at the 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway with sophomore driver Stacy Compton driving the No.92 Mark Melling owned Dodge Intrepid to a best time of 51.801 seconds to grab his first NWC pole position.

Compton, who started on the outside of the front row in the only other Superspeedway event held thus far in 2001, at the Daytona International Speedway, beat out fellow Dodge stable mate Sterling Marlin by exactly eight hundredths of a second and Daytona 500 pole-sitter Bill Elliott by a full two tenths as Mark Melling's team took their first pole position since Elliott himself won the pole in the 1991 Hardee's 500 at the Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Best of the non-Dodge runners was Ford's Ricky Craven with a best time of 52.072 seconds for PPI Motorsports and he headed Mark Martin and current Winston Cup points leader Dale Jarrett while Tony Stewart was the lone Pontiac representative in the top ten in seventh place.

Daytona 500 winner Michael Waltrip proved that he is very much a force to be reckoned with on the Superspeedways as he led the Chevrolet contingent with a best time of 52.164 seconds, albeit only good enough for eighth spot ahead of Kevin Harvick and Joe Nemechek who rounded out the top ten.

Jeff Gordon will start 13th, one place ahead of the impressively consistent Bobby Hamilton and the returning Dave Marcis who qualified for his first event of the year after unsuccessful attempts at Daytona and Bristol in the venerable No.71 Realtree machine.

Dale Earnhardt Jr starts 19th with Jeff Burton 22nd and Rusty Wallace 26th while Bobby Labonte's miserable year continues with only 30th starting position in the Joe Gibbs Pontiac.

With 48 cars attempting to make the 43-car field there was always going to be five drivers going home unhappy and the unfortunate five were Kenny Wallace (for the first time in 2001), Kyle Petty, Rick Mast, Hut Stricklin and outside bet Andy Hillenburg.