Newman lightning quick for Charlotte pole

Ryan Newman will take the field to the green flag for NASCAR's longest race Sunday night at Lowe's Motor Speedway. Newman ran a lightning quick lap of 192.988 mph to best the field by one mile-per-hour on his way to his fourth pole of the ...

Ryan Newman will take the field to the green flag for NASCAR's longest race Sunday night at Lowe's Motor Speedway. Newman ran a lightning quick lap of 192.988 mph to best the field by one mile-per-hour on his way to his fourth pole of the season.

Ryan Newman.

Photo by Kurt Dahlstrom.

"We were pretty quick off the truck," Newman said. "We worked on it a little bit.I am just really happy.a lot of work went into this car. I wrecked last week and we went and brought the car we won with at Dover. Hopefully it's good enough to win Sunday night."

Newman becomes the first driver to break 28-seconds (in one lap) at LMS. Of the three fastest laps ran all year this season, Newman holds all three (Charlotte, Atlanta, Texas).

This is Newman's 28th career Budweiser pole award.

"I was just trying to break the 28 second bracket," said Newman. "I just barely did it. Awesome job by everybody at Penske racing. The Alltel Dodge was fast, there's no doubt about that but I look forward to the entire weekend here."

Jeff Gordon will start on the outside pole. Gordon toured the 1.5-mile quad oval with a lap of 191.925 mph.

"A 600 mile race is long, so it's very important to take your time out there," said Gordon. You don't want to get caught racing too early and get into trouble. I want to be around when it counts.

"You don't want to lie back too much and go down a lap, and the race is too long to try and stay up front all day. I want to stay near the lead pack, keep my car together, and by the end of the race be in contention for a good finish."

The third quickest lap was posted by Matt Kenseth. Kenseth ran a lap of 191.259 mph. It is Kenseth's best time trial effort of the season.

"It was hard to gauge the improvement of the track surface during the All- Star Challenge," said Kenseth. "Right now I feel like I liked it better before. But we'll definitely know more after we run 600 miles on the new surface Sunday night."

Kasey Kahne and Jimmie Johnson complete the top five.

"Ryan (Newman) put up a lap there," said Johnson. "Chad (Knaus, crew chief) wants to be the fastest and he wants to be the best and with Chad's competitive spirit he wanted to get out there and wanted to knock that (Newman's lap) down. But, it was a great lap for us.

"Qualifying is not our strong suit."

Notably, the top seventeen cars all broke the track qualifying record set by Mike Bliss last weekend with a lap of 189.208 mph.

Fifty-two cars attempted to qualify for the forty-three car field. Amongst those failing to make the show were Jason Leffler, Bobby Hamilton, Jr., Tony Raines, and Hermie Sadler.