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Friday, May 4
Martin nabs second pole of season
ESPN.com news services
RICHMOND, Va. – Mark Martin found the best mix of speed and
caution Friday and won the pole for the Pontiac Excitement 400
NASCAR Winston Cup race on a track too slippery for some drivers to
handle.
Martin turned a lap at 124.613 mph to barely edge Rusty Wallace,
who circled the three-quarter-mile oval at 124.596, .003 seconds
slower, for the top spot in Saturday night's race.
|  | | Mark Martin won his third pole at Richmond on Friday. |
John Andretti and Hermie Sadler crashed during their runs,
Andretti slamming into the wall coming out of turn two and having
to be towed off the track and Sadler hitting the wall at the start
of the backstretch.
Rick Mast and Jerry Nadeau also spun out in the front stretch on
the newly sealed asphalt, Nadeau after wrecking his primary car in
practice. Both managed to avoid damaging their cars and drove away
unscathed.
For Martin, his second pole of the season and the 41st of his
career was a welcome relief in a season where very little has gone
right.
"That's just a fantastic thing for this race team," Martin
said. "The way they've rallied behind me and all the heartbreaking
disappointment that they've had to endure this year, it hasn't
slowed them down one bit.
"They just keep in there digging, and I'm so happy for them."
Martin, the 27th of 46 drivers to make his two-lap run on the
sun-baked track, earned his third pole at Richmond and first since
1996.
Ricky Rudd was third at 124.493 mph, giving Ford the top three
spots, with the Chevrolet of Steve Park on the outside of the
second row.
Jimmy Spencer was fifth in a Ford, followed by Jeff Gordon's
Chevrolet, Tony Stewart's Pontiac and Bill Elliott's Dodge. The
Pontiac of Bobby Labonte and the Dodge of Ward Burton complete the
top 10.
Martin, who is 23rd in the points race and 21 positions behind
where he was a year ago, said the pole is "the shot my team really
needed."
"This is a brand new race car and every lap we turned just felt
good," he said. "It just kind of felt like the old days to me. I
used to go to the race track and drive cars that felt like this all
the time."
Wallace, coming off a victory last week at California, is fourth
in points and seeking his series-high seventh victory on the
D-shaped oval.
Other noteables include defending race champion Dale Earnhardt
Jr., who qualified 14th, and points leader Dale Jarrett, who was
20th.
"We're going to be way back, so were just going to have to be
patient and see if we can be there when lap 400 gets there,"
Jarrett said.
Of the drivers with mishaps, Andretti will start 39th on a
provisional, Mast 22nd and Nadeau 29th. Sadler, a Virginia native
from Emporia 50 miles away, was one of three drivers to miss the
field.
Also going home were Buckshot Jones and Hut Stricklin, who was
last in qualifying in a car owned by Richmond-based Junie Donlavey.
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