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Far and away Veteran driver Rudd easily gains pole for Pocono 500
Updated: Saturday June 16, 2001 10:50 AM
By Stephen Thomas, CNNSI.com LONG POND, Pa. -- Last week at Michigan, the difference between the penthouse -- the pole -- and the outhouse -- 37th -- was .59 seconds. In other words, if you were .59 seconds slower than pole-sitter Jeff Gordon, you either used a provisional, or you went home. Clearly, NASCAR is a supremely competitive endeavor ... well, most weeks anyway. Still, on a steamy Friday afternoon at Pocono Raceway, Ricky Rudd, going out 20th, zipped around the triangular, 2.5-mile track in 52.785 seconds, more than a half-second quicker than Sterling Marlin, who qualified second. Rudd's 170.503 mph was well off Tony Stewart's track record of 172.391, but it easily withstood the challenges of the next 25 drivers. "That was a lap I didn't think anybody could do today, let alone us," Rudd said of his first pole of the year and 27th of his career. "We were really fast in practice and I was just hoping I could get back to that speed. To be honest, I didn't think it was that good of a lap. I thought we had slowed up a little bit from practice because I was slipping and sliding there, but I'm glad it turned out the way it did, though."
Marlin, who will start on the front row for the first time since Talladega and the second time this year, was perfectly happy to come in second to Rudd. "He was in another time zone," Marlin said of Rudd. "Pretty much knew [there was no way to catch Rudd]. I looked at the practice sheets this morning, he was a half-second faster. There wasn't nothing we could do about it." Ken Schrader, who had been among the fastest in morning practice, was equally happy with the way things went in qualifying. Schrader, 46, will start third Sunday, his first top-5 start in 48 races and just his second top-10 start of the year. "We thought we had something until Ricky went out," Schrader said, "and then we said, 'Holy heck.' But we didn't want to do anything stupid trying to get second. It was his pole to throw away." Rookie Andy Houston and Kenny Wallace, whose trials and tribulations with sponsorship were common knowledge earlier this year, were less happy after they missed the race. It's the second consecutive race that Wallace has missed since signing a deal with a new sponsor three weeks ago.
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