Travis Gregg (L) celebrating his pole

Jeff Simmons, last year's polesitter and current track record holder, will sit on the outside of the front row with a strong speed of 153.830 MPH.  It was a bittersweet day for Simmons as he saw his provisional pole, but not his track record, fall to Gregg who had not really shown exceptional speed in practice.

The session started with Arie Luyendyk, Jr. taking to the track as thunderstorms in the distance threatened to scrub the qualifications.  Luyendyk had been battling with handling problems in practice, and his qualification effort was no exception.  He posted a speed of 144.657 MPH and will start from the 10th position.

Following Luyendyk, Jr. was Jaime Camara.  Camara has been strong in practice with the second fastest combined speed.  He did not disappoint, putting up a speed of 153.332 MPH and grabbing the provisional pole.  Camara's teammate, Chris Festa could not quite match his time, with a speed of 151.677.  This put Festa provisionally in second, but ultimately gave him the sixth starting position.

Jay Drake rolled out onto the track after Festa and improved his speeds from practice by about 4 MPH, but although he was faster than Festa, he was unable to remove Camara from the provisional pole with a speed of 152.092 MPH.

Drake was followed by Marty Roth who posted a speed of 149.448, placing him provisionally in fourth, but ultimately in eighth.

Roth was followed onto the track by Jeff Simmons, who had been incredibly strong in practice all day, nearly 3 MPH faster than his nearest competitor, Camara.  Jeff thrilled the crowd by capturing the provisional pole with a speed of 153.830 MPH.  This placed him atop the scoreboard with a time that seemed unbeatable.

Nick Bussell qualified after Simmons and put up a speed of 146.147.  This was slightly faster than his practice times, but clearly Nick was not happy with the way his car was handling.  After Bussell came Tom Wood.  Wood provisionally qualified fifth (and ultimately seventh) with a speed of 150.774 MPH.

Then, in an effort that surprised just about everyone at the track, the Sam Schmidt Motorsports team managed to find a bunch more speed, as Gregg blazed around the track with qualifying speed of 154.230 MPH on his first lap.  This was significant in that most of the other entrants set their fastest times on the second lap, but Gregg put his time on the board after just his two warmup laps.  Asked about how he found the extra speed, Gregg said, "I just let it hang loose a little more and went for the pole.  I knew I had optimal conditions… I went out there for the warmup lap, and the wind wasn't that bad at that point.  I just stood on it…"

Wade Cunningham was the last car to attempt to qualify, and he posted a respectable speed of 152.181 MPH, which gave him the fourth starting position.  Cunningham, whose car had progressively gotten slower in the practice sessions during the day, said, "Arie (Luyendyk, Jr.) gave us some good feedback and we rolled the dice a little bit.  I went in a little bit harder than I thought we could and it kind of paid off.  We're closer to the front than I thought we'd be."

Jon Herb did not qualify due to an incident in the first practice session in which he spun in Turn 4 and hit the outside wall.  Herb said, "I was coming around and in the middle of (Turn) 4 where the car rotates, it rotated alright.  It stepped out on me when I was hard on the gas and it kind of got away from me and into the fence."  The Vision Racing team was hard at work on Herb's car though and it should be ready for the race tomorrow.

So far in 2005, when starting from the pole, Travis Gregg has won three of four races.  He's also coming off a dominant win in Kentucky  That's a record that's hard to wager against -- but there are 10 other drivers who will be starting tomorrow who would surely take that bet.

The starting lineup for tomorrow's race will be: Gregg, Simmons, Camara, Cunningham, Drake, Festa, Wood, Roth, Bussell, Luyendyk, Jr., Herb.