Pepsi 400 pole for Stewart.
Less than one week following his first win of the 2005 season, Tony Stewart raced to his first Bud Pole award since Chicagoland 2003 on Friday at the Daytona International Speedway.
Stewart led a Chevrolet clean sweep of the top five positions in qualifying for Saturday night's Pepsi 400 as Thursday's poor weather relented, allowing the Nextel Cup contenders to get a sole practice session in before qualifying began.
Less than one week following his first win of the 2005 season, Tony Stewart raced to his first Bud Pole award since Chicagoland 2003 on Friday at the Daytona International Speedway.
Stewart led a Chevrolet clean sweep of the top five positions in qualifying for Saturday night's Pepsi 400 as Thursday's poor weather relented, allowing the Nextel Cup contenders to get a sole practice session in before qualifying began.
Stewart's best lap of 48.496-seconds bettered Scott Riggs and Jimmie Johnson while supposed road course specialist Boris Said set fourth fastest time. Joe Nemechek will start fifth as all three MB/MB2/MBV cars qualified inside the top five.
Elliott Sadler was the sole Ford representative inside the top ten in sixth position ahead of the Chevrolet's of Kevin Harvick and the returning Jason Leffler, who didn't have to worry about timing his way into the field following Terry Labonte's efforts at the Infineon Raceway last week.
Rusty Wallace was Dodge's only representative in the top ten with ninth fastest time while Kerry Earnhardt completed the top ten.
Robby Gordon went some way towards making up for his Daytona 500 DNQ with eleventh fastest time. Daytona 500 winner Jeff Gordon was 15th, new points leader Greg Biffle 18th and defending Nextel Cup Champion Kurt Busch 28th.
Dale Earnhardt Jr could do no better than 39th fastest, more than one second slower than Stewart and despite qualifying 30th and 35th fastest respectively, Mike Garvey and Kenny Wallace were the two non-qualifiers.
