August 12, Sparta, KY - Travis Gregg, with a blistering qualifying effort reminiscent of his effort here in 2004, will start from the pole position in the 2005 Menards Infiniti Pro Series Bluegrass 100 at the Kentucky Speedway.  Starting next to Gregg on the first row is his teammate Jaime Camara. 

In the combined practices, Gregg, who holds the record for the fastest qualification lap at the Kentucky Speedway (from 2004), was only seventh fastest out of 11 cars.  However, for his qualification attempt, either he or the Sam Schmidt Motorsports team managed to find some incredible speed in his #7 Lucas Oil entry.  Gregg bested his fastest practice lap by over six-tenths of a second (a full 4 MPH) and stunned the paddock when he placed the car on the pole.

"We always seem to pick up a little bit when we trim the car out before qualifying, " Gregg said, "I just try to drive the wheels off of it because the guys put so much hard work into it.  I don't want to let them down."

The qualification started off with Wade Cunningham, the current IPS points leader, putting up a speed of 183.840 MPH.  He was followed by Marty Roth with a speed of 183.457.

Then Nick Bussell, in the first Vision Racing entry to take to the track, bested Cunningham's speed to take the provisional pole with a speed of 185.561.  At the time, this was the fastest speed of the day.  Chris Festa, the first Sam Schmidt entry, followed Bussell with a speed of 184.758 MPH, placing him provisionally in second.  Jon Herb followed Festa and bested his time with an effort of 184.770.  This removed Festa from second.

Marco Andretti qualified after Herb and came close to Nick Bussell's speed with an effort of 185.019, placing *him* in second -- provisionally.  Arie Luyendyk, Jr., who had been struggling with an ill-handling car all day, qualified next and was nearly five MPH off the pace at 180.967.

At this point, Drake's speed seemed like it would hold, but Camara, Gregg, and Simmons had yet to qualify.  Camara went out next and laid down a blistering 186.299 MPH, which was .5 MPH faster than Drake.  It seemed certain that he would be the pole sitter.  After all, his time was a full mile per hour faster than the fastest practice time.

But Travis Gregg had a little more in store.  "We have two choices of gears for qualification, 5th and 6th," Gregg related, "I went out and on my warmup lap, I was on the rev limiter in 5th, so I used 6th.  I didn't drive the car tight through the corners like most drivers did today.  I let it free up and took a higher line to keep the revs up."

Sixth gear certainly worked well for him as his time was over 1.5 MPH faster than his teammate Camara, and over 2 MPH faster than Drake in third.  This clearly put him on top of the field and gave him a dominant place atop the field.

Jeff Simmons was the last to qualify, and could not match Gregg's speed with his own of 183.740. 

Marco Andretti summed up the his opinion of the importance of qualifying by saying, "We made a few little changes after the last practice and it helped a lot.  Now, I can run it right down on the white line all the way around.  If you can do that here during the race, it doesn't matter where you start."

Marco may be right.  Last year, Gregg also started from the pole, but finished fifth.  One thing is certain though:  It will certainly be exciting to watch the race tomorrow to find out...

The final qualification order from the Kentucky Speedway is: Gregg, Camara, Drake, Bussell, Andretti, Herb, Festa, Cunningham, Simmons, Roth, Luyendyk, Jr.