Vickers' first Bud Pole comes at opportune time

ROCKINGHAM, N.C. -- Brian Vickers raised the stakes Friday at slippery North Carolina Speedway. Now it's up to the rest of the challengers in the NASCAR Busch Series points championship battle to ante up or fold.

On a track which favors starting near the front, Vickers posted a fast lap of 155.037 mph in the No. 5 Chevrolet, earning him his first Bud Pole and a front-row seat for Saturday's Target House 200.

Vickers went out third in the 54-car lineup and posted the lap to beat.

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"I'm excited about having that pole," Vickers said. "Normally you fight to go later. We were fortunate to have the weather the way we did today."

In the last eight Busch Series races at The Rock, the race winner has started no farther back than 10th. And almost a third of the winners have come from the pole position.

Vickers said his first Bud Pole was just a matter of time.

"The team's done an awesome job in qualifying," he said. "The past couple of weeks, we've had some awesome qualifying efforts. Somebody just seems to bump me off by a couple of hundredths of a second."

So how will Vickers approach Saturday's race?

	Vickers has three wins this year, all from top-five starting positions. Credit: Autostock

"More or less, you've got to run your own race," Vickers said. "The team will keep up with where everybody's at. The biggest thing is keep the fenders on it and stay on the lead lap. That's how we're going to win this championship. You might not be able to win it here, but you sure can lose it."

Vickers trails points leader Scott Riggs by 21 points and second-place Ron Hornaday by four with two races remaining. He's one point in front of David Green, while Jason Keller is 39 behind Vickers.

David Green, who went from first to fourth after Phoenix, was the next-fastest of the contenders. He'll start fifth by virtue of his lap of 153.846 mph in the No. 37 Pontiac.

Riggs, who finished 17th in the spring race, qualified 10th with a speed of 153.323 mph in the No. 10 Ford. He was the first of the contenders to make an attempt.

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"I don't think there's any difference pressure-wise," Riggs said. "It just seems like every week it's a struggle for us to get a good handle on the race car. We haven't been qualifying that well, but we have good race cars. Hopefully we can do the same this weekend."

Hornaday's lap of 152.429 mph in the No. 2 Chevy was only good enough for 16th place.

Keller, who needs to leapfrog four drivers, turned a lap of 152.252 mph in the No. 57 Ford. That put him 18th on the grid.

"It was definitely slower than we practiced and I don't know why," Keller said. "I wish I had the answer but we slowed down for some reason."

Bobby Hamilton Jr., on the verge of elimination, finds himself in the most precarious position, starting back in 20th in the No. 25 Ford. In addition to turning the slowest lap of the contenders -- 151.936 mph -- he's only had one top-five finish in 10 career starts at Rockingham.

"It was loose, simple as that," Hamilton said. "We're here to win Rockingham and then go to Homestead and win. If we do that, then the points will fall."