Burton collects Bud Pole at Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS -- Jeff Burton picked up right where he left off Friday at Las Vegas.

Burton, a three-time winner at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, including the 2000 Busch Series race, took the Bud Pole Award for Saturday's Busch Series Sam's Town 300.

Starting outside of Burton will be Jimmy Spencer in the No. 1 Yellow Chevrolet. Rookie Casey Mears will start third on the grid in the No. 66 Phillips 66 Dodge. Outside of him will be Jeff Green in the No. 21 Rockwell Automation Chevrolet.

Burton, driving the No. 9 Gain Ford, raced to the top starting spot with a lap of 169.138 mph (31.921 seconds) around the 1.5-mile, relatively flat speedway.

What makes Burton so good in the land of Lady Luck?

"We revamped our Busch team in the off-season and brought in all new people," Burton said. "We just put in a huge effort and the team does a good job getting this car ready. Every lap we've made here at Las Vegas has been fast and competitive.

"Starting up front here is nice, but you don't have to do that here to be successful. The Busch race takes more because you don't have as many laps as you do in the Cup race.

"As far as a game plan for the Busch race -- just go like hell."

For Mears, the former open-wheel racer is really starting to like his new home with fenders. Mears is the son of Roger Mears and nephew of Indy great Roger Mears.

With his third-place start, it makes him not only the highest starting rookie but also the highest placing Busch Series regular for the race.

"This is only my fourth start in this series," Mears said, referring to last year's Homestead race being his first. "I'm real happy right now to come out with basically a new team with the switch to Dodge and all.

"The guys are just doing an excellent job getting these cars ready. Las Vegas is a regular track and you carry a lot of speed going into the corners. I'm glad I tested here before the season.

"I'm having a really good time in NASCAR, I really am. These cars are much different than the Champ and Indy cars I was driving. I'm still in a big learning curve with this deal.

"I think, as long as we can stay in the top-10 spots with those other guys, we'll be OK. I'm still trying to figure out the pace of the race each week. Once we make that first stop for tires I'll be able to better judge how we're going to be on race day."

Rounding out the top 10 qualifiers will be rookie Scott Riggs, Stacy Compton, Mike McLaughlin, Ricky Hendrick, Joe Nemechek and Johnny Sauter.

Race time is 4 p.m. ET and all 200 laps can be seen live on FX and heard on PRN Radio Networks.