Sadler scoops Bristol pole.

Elliott Sadler broke Ryan Newman's stranglehold on pole position at the Bristol Motor Speedway with the quickest lap in Friday's Bud Pole qualifying session for Sunday's Food City 500.

The Robert Yates Racing driver lapped the half-mile speedbowl in a fraction over 15 seconds for just his third career Nextel Cup pole position, in doing so becoming the first driver other than Ryan Newman to take top spot in the spring Bristol race since Jeff Gordon in 2002.

Noted Bristol qualifying experts Newman and Gordon didn't even make it on to the front row of a 43-car grid separated by less than six tenths of a second as Dave Blaney put in his best qualifying effort of the year to grab second spot, three hundredths of a second behind Sadler.

Rusty Wallace, a nine-time Bristol winner, was third fastest in the Friday evening session, with Gordon only fourth fastest as NASCAR now impounds all 43 starting cars until Sunday morning.

With a good starting spot virtually essential at BMS, rookie Travis Kvapil and former Busch Champion Jeff Green made an excellent start to their weekends, setting fifth and sixth quickest times respectively, pushing Newman down to seventh.

Mindful of the need to stay out of trouble in the early, very crowded, laps of Sunday's race, potential 'Chase' contenders Jeremy Mayfield, Greg Biffle, Kasey Kahne and Tony Stewart rounded out the top eleven positions with Kevin Harvick and points leader Jimmie Johnson both securing top 15 starting spots.

Mark Martin, Bobby Labonte, Joe Nemechek and Atlanta winner Carl Edwards gave themselves a much tougher task after poor qualifying results.

Martin will start only 34th while Labonte, who is desperate for a good result, qualified 39th. Nemechek wasn't even among the fastest 43 cars in qualifying but got in thanks to his position in the team standings and will start 41st while Edwards crashed on his warm-up lap and failed to set a time.

Edwards will now start from the back of the grid in a back-up car, his Atlanta honeymoon now well and truly over.

In the 'race' to qualify, Terry Labonte was the fastest of the 'Non top 35' teams in 16th position. Mike Wallace increased his chances of getting the #4 team into the top 35 with a solid 22nd place effort while Stanton Barrett and Carl Long both qualified for their first races of the year after setting 23rd and 38th best times respectively.

Also qualifying were Jimmy Spencer in Don Arnold's Dodge, Shane Hmiel, Hermie Sadler and Jason Leffler while failing to make it were Johnny Sauter, Robby Gordon, Randy LaJoie, Brad Teague and a devastated Kevin Lepage, whose #37 team lost virtually all hope of staying in the top 35 with their second DNQ of the year.