HAMPTON, Ga. -- One of the great fallacies in NASCAR Winston Cup racing is that Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway are the two fastest tracks on the schedule.

That would be true if NASCAR didn't mandate the use of restrictor plates on the carburetors to keep the speeds below 190 miles per hour at those two 2.5-mile ovals.

The two fastest tracks on the Winston Cup tour are actually Texas Motor Speedway and Atlanta Motor Speedway -- two 1.5-mile ovals where the speeds reach the mid-190 mile per hour range.

According to the competitors in Sunday's Bass Pro Shops MBNA 500, that makes racing scary fast.

Ryan Newman will lead the 43-car field to the green flag when Sunday's race begins at 12:30 p.m. EST.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. starts third and has said when the leader's car gets hooked up he can pull away to a sizeable lead, which means it's very important to stay on the lead lap.

"That's what I love about this place is the fact that you can move around when your car's not quite working as well," Earnhardt said. "In one place, you've got all kinds of other places to run on the race track to try to change how your car is working. Normally though, you've got one guy who is blistering the field and you can get lapped really easily here. But it's a beautiful race track."

Speeds were fast in Friday night's qualifications with Newman winning the pole with a lap at 194.295 mph -- the fastest qualifying lap of the season. But those speeds will drop off under racing conditions.

"The one thing about going to fast in qualifying is that you know you don't have to do that all the time tomorrow," Earnhardt said. "The times will fall off quite a bit. You'll probably lose a good two-and-a-half seconds in the tire run in the race Sunday. At the end of the tire run, you don't feel like you're really going quite that fast and you've got all kinds of things you want to do to the car to try to make it go quicker."

Earnhardt is confident he can be a factor for the victory because of his dramatic improvement in qualifications. In the March race here, the team took a provisional starting position to make the race.

"I look forward to trying to run up front," Earnhardt said. "We need to get a win."

Earnhardt is third in the Winston Cup standings and thanks to Matt Kenseth's fall slump, he is 283 points behind with four races remaining. Kevin Harvick is second, 240 points out of first place.

Kenseth had another poor qualifying performance and had to take a provisional starting position. He will start 37th Sunday. Harvick will line up 10th.

While Newman has a season-high nine poles and eight victories, Bobby Labonte is the master of the 1.544-mile oval with six of his 20 Winston Cup wins coming at Atlanta, including five since the track was reconfigured in 1997 to its current quad-oval shape.

"I only one won time on the old oval configuration and five times on this one, so I have the hang of this one better but I like the old configuration better," Labonte said. "I like the old configuration better, though. It was a real race track. It was built for racing, not for how to put more grandstands on the frontstretch."

Because the track was changed from an oval with two short straightaways and two sweeping turns into a quad-oval frontstretch, it allowed the speeds to increase dramatically. That's why the speeds can be scary fast.

"The speeds are always fast here," Labonte said. "At the end of the day, you're like, 'Man that was a fast race.' You're always going fast, but you can still race well here to where the speeds aren't as bad because you have multiple grooves. I don't think you can get scared at that time. It's when you screw up and run a slow lap, that's when you get the 'oh, that took my breath away' feeling."