Bobby Labonte on pole

When his time and speed were finally posted, a surprised Labonte had not only taken the Bud Pole Award - the 19th of his series career - for the Kmart 400 at Michigan Speedway, he obliterated Ward Burton's previous track record of 188.843mph, set last August. Labonte toured the 2-mile venue in 37.918 seconds, at a blistering pace of 189.883mph. His last Bud Pole was for the UAW-GM 500 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in October, 1999.

"(The crew) told me what we ran and I was like, 'Well that is just truly amazing.' I don't know what happened," said Labonte, still stunned at the official results.

"It blew me away."

Ricky Rudd was the provisional polewinner before Labonte hit the racing surface. Rudd's effort was a lap around in 38.091 seconds, at 189.021 mph. The defending series champion and Kmart 400 racewinner Dale Jarrett, Rudd's teammate, didn't complete his lap which came right before Rudd's.

"It was a good lap. I know my team-mate Dale Jarrett had a little trouble right before it was time for me to go out, so I tried to just block it out," Rudd said.

"These guys worked really hard on this Texaco/Havoline Taurus. It's been getting better and better, and faster and faster, and I'm just the one benefiting from it today."

Jarrett, who dominated last year's event, watched his opportunity go up in smoke when the engine let go.

"Going into turn three I felt it and then it just let go," said a disappointed Jarrett. "Everything was great right up until then."

"We don't want to (start deep in the field), but we have no choice now, so we'll just get ready to race. It's a long 400 miles, so if you have a good car, it won't matter where you start."

Jeff Gordon snagged his fourth top-5 in the 13 events so far this season, and appeared pleased with his third place effort.

"I was hoping I could put together a good lap at both ends of the track. We did.

"I was surprised. I wasn't expecting to run as good of a lap as I did. We haven't qualified as well as we needed to all year long."

Rusty Wallace will start fourth, followed by Joe Nemechek. Rounding out the top-10 are Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Jeff Burton, Bill Elliott, Dale Earnhardt and John Andretti.

Some other notables failed to make the grid during first round on Friday. Tony Stewart, Mike Skinner, Kyle Petty, Jimmy Spencer, Darrell Waltrip and Terry Labonte.

Bud Second Round Fastest Qualifying is set to take place today (Saturday).