Musgrave beats Hamilton for truck pole

Petree to the back after engine change

MARTINSVILLE, Va. -- Ted Musgrave led a sweep of the front row by former Winston Cup drivers Friday by turning a lap of 91.297 mph to win the pole for Saturday's Advance Auto Parts 250 at Martinsville Speedway.

Musgrave edged Bobby Hamilton, who went 91.188 mph, to win his second straight NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series pole at the .526-mile flat Martinsville oval.

Advance Auto Parts 250  Lineup

"Martinsville qualifying is really treacherous," Musgrave said. "One little slip and you lose three tenths. I just happened to be fortunate enough to really get a good hard run off turn 4 and came to the line and got a good run for the pole.

"I was the fastest qualifier, but I might not have the fastest truck on race day. We're going to do a lot of changing on our truck in Happy Hour and hopefully we'll get faster, but we've got a lot of work to do."

Musgrave was sixth-fastest in Happy Hour. Chad Chaffin, who qualified 23rd, was fastest in the final practice.

Hamilton, who won at Martinsville in the NCTS in 2000, leads the Craftsman Truck Series points standings.

"This is a pretty unique place," Hamilton said. "It's about the same setup every time you come here. Maybe you need a bigger or smaller swaybar or maybe new technology on shocks, but you can about bind your springs up like Rusty Wallace has been doing the last 38 years. That's the way this place is, real consistent.

"Martinsville has been good to me. I didn't real care for the place, but I've always done well here, so I like coming here. All the people within the company have a lot of confidence everywhere we go right now. We feel like we can be a top five truck everywhere we go. We're not trying to get greedy. If we can't win, we're not going to do anything stupid to knock ourselves out of the top five."

Travis Kvapil qualified third, with Andy Petree and Dennis Setzer rounding out the top five. Petree, however, will have to go of the rear of the field for Saturday's 1 p.m. ET race because of an engine change.