Jarrett on a roll, takes pole at Michigan

BROOKLYN, Mich. -- Seems like Dale Jarrett is in special delivery mode, as of late.

After capturing the win at Pocono Raceway last week, he used that same winning car to win the Bud Pole Award for the Sirius Satellite Radio 400 at Michigan International Speedway.

Jarrett, driver of the No. 88 UPS Ford, laid down a lap of 189.071 mph (38.081 sec) around the two-mile oval located in the Irish Hills of Michigan. Although not a record, it is the 15th pole of his career and first in 23 races.

He also had to endure a rain delay of 1 hour and 48 minutes after a light shower swept over the track. That came after only 19 of the 43 cars had made a qualifying run.

"I saw all of these guys running fast laps and you couldn't have better conditions to run under," Jarrett said. "This race track is very temperature sensitive. When you get cloud cover it's going to be very fast.

"Our car was very good. I probably left a little bit on the table in Turns 1 and 2. We brought the car we won with last week. What else are you going to do?

"If it runs good at Pocono, you can pretty much count on it being good somewhere else. The car makes good downforce and what you need here is a car that will go through the corners well."

Starting outside of Jarrett will be Michael Waltrip in the No. 15 NAPA Chevy. Jarrett beat Waltrip's time of 188.793 mph (38.137 sec) to knock him off the pole.

Waltrip has been on quite the roll himself lately capturing three top-10 finishes in the last five starts. This is Waltrip's best start of the season, as well.

"It was really good for us," Waltrip said. "We were a little off just then, though. It's kind of hard to get a pole when you leave a little something out there.

"These guys are so good and we beat some pretty good qualifiers there in (Elliott) Sadler, (Kurt) Busch and (Ryan) Newman. But I just left too much in Turn 3 and 4. We were struggling there and I didn't do what I wanted."

Casey Atwood got into the wall on his first qualifying lap.

Trailing him in third for the green flag on Sunday will be Dale Earnhardt Jr., his teammate at Dale Earnhardt Inc. The driver of the No. 8 Budweiser Chevy was close with his lap of 188.744 mph (38.147 sec), but not close enough to qualify in the top row.

Rounding out the top 10 starting spots will be Bill Elliott, Ward Burton, Ryan Newman, Elliott Sadler, Rick Craven, Mark Martin and Tony Stewart.

Since there were only 43 cars qualifying, all entrants made the field with nobody having to go home. The only incident occurred when Casey Atwood, driver of the No. 7 Sirius Dodge, backed his car into the Turn 3 wall on his qualifying run.