Vickers on Richmond Cup pole

The Red Bull driver set a lap of 21.238 seconds at an average speed of 127.131 mph, beating the previous benchmark set by local Denny Hamlin by nearly half a tenth of a second.

Vickers had been on pole earlier this year at Fontana but he had to give up his starting spot for the race after he was forced to change the Toyota engine on his car. This weekend however, he will get to start a race from pole for the first time this season.

"We were definitely not where we wanted to be in practice but the guys made a bunch of great changes there in practice," said Vickers, who won the first of his seven Sprint Cup career poles at this same track five years ago.

"Unfortunately we didn't make those changes until we got in qualifying trim so we were not able to experiment with race trim but we really feel like the change we made that really fixed the car in qualifying trim should apply to the race trim."

Jeff Gordon bumped Hamlin from the front row of the grid and the Joe Gibbs driver will share the second row with Earnhardt Ganassi's Martin Truex Jr, who had been fastest in the first practice session of the day.

Jeff Burton rounded out the top-five while Mike Bliss, driving for Talladega winners Phoenix Racing, was the fastest of the non-guaranteed drivers in sixth, ahead of veteran Mark Martin and rookie Scott Speed.

David Reutimann and Ryan Newman rounded out the top ten, while reigning champion Jimmie Johnson, winner of three of the last four races held at Richmond, was only 15th after topping the last practice session before qualifying.

New points leader Kurt Busch was 17th fastest and three-time Richmond winner Dale Earnhardt Jr was 25th. He needed some bodywork repairs on his car after tangling with Juan Pablo Montoya early during the first practice session of the day.

Todd Bodine and Trevor Boys both failed to qualify.

Pos  Driver              Car        Speed    Time     Gap
 1.  Brian Vickers       Toyota     127.131  21.238
 2.  Jeff Gordon         Chevrolet  126.844  21.286   + 0.048
 3.  Denny Hamlin        Toyota     126.665  21.316   + 0.078
 4.  Martin Truex Jr     Chevrolet  126.642  21.320   + 0.082
 5.  Jeff Burton         Chevrolet  126.322  21.374   + 0.136
 6.  Mike Bliss          Dodge      126.286  21.380   + 0.142
 7.  Mark Martin         Chevrolet  126.257  21.385   + 0.147
 8.  Scott Speed         Toyota     126.180  21.398   + 0.160
 9.  David Reutimann     Toyota     126.133  21.406   + 0.168
10.  Ryan Newman         Chevrolet  125.945  21.438   + 0.200
11.  David Stremme       Dodge      125.927  21.441   + 0.203
12.  Clint Bowyer        Chevrolet  125.909  21.444   + 0.206
13.  Joey Logano         Toyota     125.892  21.447   + 0.209
14.  Kyle Busch          Toyota     125.798  21.463   + 0.225
15.  Jimmie Johnson      Chevrolet  125.786  21.465   + 0.227
16.  Tony Stewart        Chevrolet  125.751  21.471   + 0.233
17.  Kurt Busch          Dodge      125.716  21.477   + 0.239
18.  Kasey Kahne         Dodge      125.681  21.483   + 0.245
19.  Kevin Harvick       Chevrolet  125.681  21.483   + 0.245
20.  Greg Biffle         Ford       125.535  21.508   + 0.270
21.  Marcos Ambrose      Toyota     125.441  21.524   + 0.286
22.  David Ragan         Ford       125.424  21.527   + 0.289
23.  Reed Sorenson       Dodge      125.366  21.537   + 0.299
24.  Joe Nemechek        Toyota     125.197  21.566   + 0.328
25.  Dale Earnhardt Jr   Chevrolet  125.023  21.596   + 0.358
26.  Dave Blaney         Toyota     124.908  21.616   + 0.378
27.  Jamie McMurray      Ford       124.792  21.636   + 0.398
28.  Sam Hornish Jr      Dodge      124.763  21.641   + 0.403
29.  Juan Montoya        Chevrolet  124.700  21.652   + 0.414
30.  Michael Waltrip     Toyota     124.700  21.652   + 0.414
31.  A.J. Allmendinger   Dodge      124.683  21.655   + 0.417
32.  Elliott Sadler      Dodge      124.654  21.660   + 0.422
33.  Paul Menard         Ford       124.585  21.672   + 0.434
34.  David Gilliland     Chevrolet  124.579  21.673   + 0.435
35.  Matt Kenseth        Ford       124.298  21.722   + 0.484
36.  Robby Gordon        Toyota     124.281  21.725   + 0.487
37.  Carl Edwards        Ford       124.149  21.748   + 0.510
38.  Jeremy Mayfield     Toyota     124.127  21.752   + 0.514
39.  Scott Riggs         Toyota     123.768  21.815   + 0.577
40.  Bobby Labonte       Ford       123.468  21.868   + 0.630
41.  Casey Mears         Chevrolet  123.265  21.904   + 0.666
42.  John Andretti       Chevrolet  122.917  21.966   + 0.728
43.  Tony Raines         Chevrolet  123.700  21.827   + 0.589
44.  Todd Bodine         Toyota     123.119  21.930   + 0.692
45.  Trevor Boys         Dodge      117.228  23.032   + 1.794