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© St. Petersburg Times, published April 13, 2002
MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- The shorter the track, the faster Jeff Gordon goes.
Gordon won the pole for Sunday's Virginia 500 at Martinsville Speedway with a lap of 94.181 mph at the half-mile track, his second short-track pole of the season.
Gordon also won the pole three weeks ago at Bristol.
"What's helped me a lot at a place like this or like Bristol is the type of racing I grew up doing -- a lot of short-track races and sprint car racing," said Gordon, driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet. "Just racing on so many different types of tracks as a kid has helped me to learn and adapt to tracks like Martinsville."
It was Gordon's 41st career pole.
Chevrolets took the first four spots. Bobby Hamilton will start on the outside of the front row, his No. 55 Chevrolet clocked at 94.092 mph, followed by Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Terry Labonte. Ford driver Rusty Wallace, the active leader with six Martinsville victories, was fifth.
Earnhardt's run was especially impressive because it came on the first of two laps. For most drivers, the second lap was faster, but Earnhardt made a mistake.
"I got up on the curb in Turn4 and spun the car out," Earnhardt said. "It would have been a 19.90, I guarantee. It would have been blasting fast." Had he clocked that time he would have run better than 95 mph. Labonte will make his first top-10 start of the season and best at Martinsville since April 1989. He did not start better than 24th in the past 10 Martinsville races.
"This is a brand new car and the guys did a great job on it," said Labonte, driver of the No. 5 Chevrolet. "This is the first time we've had a real short-track car in a while. We just need some new cars."
Series points leader Sterling Marlin was 29th.
TRUCK QUALIFYING: Ted Musgrave won the pole for today's Advance Auto Parts 250 at 92.864 mph, 20.391 seconds. Actually, he won it twice.
Musgrave's No. 1 Dodge was first on the track, but NASCAR's computer failed to register his second lap. Musgrave cooled the engine, changed tires and made another run.
"NASCAR said, 'Yeah, we messed up,' " Musgrave said. "It was kind of unfortunate. We did end up on the pole, but we probably would have been on the pole anyway."
Winston Cup owner Andy Petree, who has not driven since the last Busch Grand National race at Martinsville in 1994, qualified third in his No. 33 Chevrolet.
"Hopefully I'm in good enough shape to finish," Petree said. "There's a difference between being in good shape and getting into racing shape. You find out the muscles you don't use when you run 250 laps here."
WAR OF WORDS: Martinsville president W. Clay Campbell responded to comments by Texas Motor Speedway officials that the short track, which seats 91,000, should give up one of its two races. Texas, which holds 200,000, wants a second date.
"I don't think the fans want to see a race move anywhere, especially to some one-groove track that has probably had more problems in its five-year history than we've had in 55 years," Campbell said. "If I were running the track, I'd be happy to have one race and get it right."
SORRY, NO REFUND: Earnhardt flew home Friday night to work on his federal income tax return before Monday's filing deadline: "I'll probably sit down with my sister and do a lot of signing."