Dale Jr. wins the pole at AMS

By Rick Minter

For the AJC

Atlanta Motor Speedway president Ed Clark and his ticket-selling staff wound up with a best-case scenario as far as last-minute ticket sales for the Kobalt Tools 500 are concerned as NASCAR’s most popular driver, Dale Earnhardt Jr., won the pole for Sunday’s race.

Earnhardt, who hadn’t won a pole since April 2008 at Texas Motor Speedway, ran a speedy 192.761 mph to take the prized front-row starting spot. It was the ninth of his Cup career, and the fastest qualifying time run since the Car of Tomorrow came into use. It was a dramatic improvement over last year for Earnhardt at AMS, where he qualified 20th in the fall race and 31st in the spring.

“It sure can’t hurt,” Clark said of Earnhardt’s affect on ticket sales. “It’ll give Earnhardt’s fans the boost they’ve been looking for, and it will add a lot of anticipation about Sunday’s race.”

Clark pointed out that Earnhardt typically runs well at AMS. “He loves this track, and this pole shows that he can win on Sunday,” he said.

Earnhardt has two poles, a win and eight top-five finishes at AMS.

Earnhardt called the pole “a step in the right direction” and said it’s just a matter of time, if his team keeps performing well, before he’s back in Victory Lane.

“It’s good to be on the pole, and I’m proud of it, but we're just so hungry to do so much better on Sunday,” he said. “We're starving for a good finish, and for something like this to happen Sunday for us. That's all we can think about."

Kyle Busch will start second, ahead of Juan Pablo Montoya, Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon.

The two Georgians in the field, David Ragan and Bill Elliott, qualified 17th and 34th respectively.

The cool temperatures at qualifying time led to 22 drivers qualifying at more than 190 mph, and 34 topping 189.

Busch said he didn’t expect any negative aspects of the speeds in the race, especially because Goodyear has developed a new tire for AMS.

“Goodyear has done a lot of research and has done a good job on the tire,” he said. “They had an awesome tire from what I saw in Las Vegas and they came here and did another tire test and found another good one here. ... You won’t see the speeds as high [on Sunday] as you did tonight.”

The first eight drivers to hit the track complained of the difficulty of having to drive off into the first turn with a setting sun staring them in the face. The sun was more of an issue than in recent races because the qualifying session started at 6:10 p.m., just at the time the sun was sinking behind the billboards in the turns.

“I couldn’t see anything going into Turn 1,” said Ryan Newman, who was seeking to break a tie with Buddy Baker for most AMS poles (seven) qualified seventh. “We need to talk to NASCAR about that. But it’s a fun race track, and we’ve got a great race car this weekend. We’ll just go out there and work with it and see what we’ve got.”

Correspondent Jeff Hood contributed to this article.