Daytona Beach, Fla. – Richard Childress locked Jeff Burton in a bearhug and didn’t want to let go.
The NASCAR Nextel Cup team owner made a big financial and emotional investment during the winter to get his team back to the sport’s top echelon. The changes paid their first dividend Sunday, with Burton putting his Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet on the pole for the Daytona 500.
“It’s big,” said Burton, who hadn’t won a pole in more than five years. “Hopefully, it’s another sign that this team is getting ready to turn things around.”
Childress had one of the strongest teams in the sport until longtime driver and friend Dale Earnhardt was killed in a crash during the 2001 Daytona 500. Kevin Harvick had a good season for RCR after replacing Earnhardt the following week at Rockingham, N.C., but the team has struggled in the years since.
Childress was determined to turn things around, making numerous personnel changes and radically improving the team’s equipment since the end of the 2005 season. This was the first big test.
“Yeah, it’s emotional,” Childress said. “We’ve struggled for the last few years. We’ve got to put it all together, and we’ve got to start winning.”
Burton outran 57 other competitors to earn the top starting spot for Sunday’s race, his third career pole and first since the fall 2000 race in Richmond, Va., when he was driving for Roush Racing.
His fast lap of 189.151 mph on a windy, chilly day at Daytona International Speedway was the fastest qualifying run on the 2.5-mile, high-banked oval since Dale Jarrett’s 191.091 in February 2000.
“We knew we had a fast car (Saturday). We just didn’t know how fast these others guys really were,” Burton said.
Three-time and defending Daytona 500 winner Jeff Gordon, one of the last drivers to take to the track, came close to knocking Burton’s Chevrolet off the top spot with a lap of 188.877 in a Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.
Harvick, the star of the Childress team’s driving trio, was among the fastest in practice Saturday and was one of the favorites to win the pole. But he wound up 13th in qualifying.
Teammates Burton and rookie Clint Bowyer both made it into the top 10, though. Bowyer led the large 2006 first-year class at 187.786, good for seventh.
