Blaney gives Toyota maiden Cup pole

Blaney set a fastest lap of 29.426 seconds at an average speed of 129.437 mph. Penske's Kurt Busch was the only driver capable of getting close to the day's benchmark, being just 58 thousandths of a second short of getting the pole away from Blaney.

"For Toyota hopefully it's one step in a lot of successful days," said Blaney after claiming his second career Nextel Cup pole, also his first for the past 158 races.

"We've been testing a lot, working a lot and it shows. We're getting better and better and more importantly we need a really good run on Sunday and get a good finish.

"We've had a really solid car all day long and it went around there just awesome all day. When you get cars like that you've got to take advantage of them. It's a long race on Sunday and hopefully we can get the car running good tomorrow in race trim and be good to go."

Blaney, who had to qualify for the race on speed as he is currently 37th in the points, had already given the Japanese manufacturer their maiden Busch Series pole position at Fontana and has been arguably the best qualifier of the season thus far for Toyota.

Kurt Busch equalled his best qualifying of the year despite some drama, as his team had to make some late changes on his car due to a bad vibration they had during practice.

He was supposed to be the second car on the track to complete his run but eventually went out as one towards the end of the session and made the most of it.

"For us we had some anxious moments," Busch said. "I guess in this case it helped us to be able to bump up from about 20th up to 2nd. But the car turned real good, stuck good. I didn't know that we ere pole material and sometimes innocence and being naive is good."

Behind Busch, there were quite a few surprises among the top five placed in qualifying, the first of them being Chip Ganassi's Reed Sorenson getting third and Johnny Sauter fourth behind him. For both drivers it has been their best qualifying effort of the year.

On the third row for Sunday's race and carrying the momentum from his maiden Nextel Cup win last weekend, Juan Pablo Montoya had his best qualifying for a while since he had been fourth on the grid at the third race of the year in Las Vegas.

"We were a little conservative from what we could have run," Montoya said after getting his best qualifying result with the Car of Tomorrow. "We lowered the track bar a little bit and it was maybe a little better in practice but it was too edgy. We just took the safe route out and it paid off."

"I'm a lot more comfortable. This short track seems to be pretty good. I seem to be able to not only perform better in the big ones but it's been pretty good. The last few big ones have been pretty hard for us."

Montoya will share the sixth row with Dale Earnhardt Jr, while Kevin Harvick, winner of this race a year ago, will share the fourth row of the grid with three-time winner at Loudon Jeff Gordon.

Jimmie Johnson, will start from tenth in his first race with Ron Malec as his crew chief, sharing the fifth row of the grid with Denny Hamlin who currently runs second in the points' race.

Among the key runners who did not enjoy a good qualifying were Jeff Burton, the driver with the most wins at the track, finishing 26th. Meanwhile Matt Kenseth, third in the points, could only manage 30th despite his late qualifying draw.

Brian Vickers, who had qualified 28th, was sent packing after his car failed the post qualifying inspection for being too low on its left front, handing Chad Chaffin a place on the starting grid.

Michael Waltrip, Kenny Wallace, Dale Jarrett, Scott Riggs and the second Red Bull of AJ Allmendinger all failed to qualify.

Pos  Driver              Make        Speed     Time
 1.  Dave Blaney         Toyota      129.437   29.426
 2.  Kurt Busch          Dodge       129.182   29.484 + 0.058
 3.  Reed Sorenson       Dodge       128.589   29.620 + 0.194
 4.  Johnny Sauter       Chevrolet   128.502   29.640 + 0.214
 5.  Juan Montoya        Dodge       128.411   29.661 + 0.235
 6.  Dale Earnhardt Jr   Chevrolet   128.389   29.666 + 0.240
 7.  Kevin Harvick       Chevrolet   128.372   29.670 + 0.244
 8.  Jeff Gordon         Chevrolet   128.350   29.675 + 0.249
 9.  Martin Truex Jr     Chevrolet   128.329   29.680 + 0.254
10.  Jimmie Johnson      Chevrolet   128.316   29.683 + 0.257
11.  Denny Hamlin        Chevrolet   128.299   29.687 + 0.261
12.  Ryan Newman         Dodge       128.242   29.700 + 0.274
13.  Regan Smith         Chevrolet   128.225   29.704 + 0.278
14.  Tony Stewart        Chevrolet   128.139   29.724 + 0.298
15.  Jeff Green          Chevrolet   128.083   29.737 + 0.311
16.  Robby Gordon        Ford        127.988   29.759 + 0.333
17.  David Reutimann     Toyota      127.962   29.765 + 0.339
18.  Kyle Busch          Chevrolet   127.765   29.811 + 0.385
19.  JJ Yeley            Chevrolet   127.718   29.822 + 0.396
20.  Clint Bowyer        Chevrolet   127.696   29.827 + 0.401
21.  Casey Mears         Chevrolet   127.641   29.840 + 0.414
22.  Carl Edwards        Ford        127.542   29.863 + 0.437
23.  Elliott Sadler      Dodge       127.534   29.865 + 0.439
24.  David Stremme       Dodge       127.525   29.867 + 0.441
25.  Ward Burton         Chevrolet   127.397   29.897 + 0.471
26.  Jeff Burton         Chevrolet   127.393   29.898 + 0.472
27.  David Gilliland     Ford        127.363   29.905 + 0.479
28.  Kasey Kahne         Dodge       127.248   29.932 + 0.506
29.  Jeremy Mayfield     Toyota      127.180   29.948 + 0.522
30.  Matt Kenseth        Ford        127.074   29.973 + 0.547
31.  Bobby Labonte       Dodge       127.049   29.979 + 0.553
32.  David Ragan         Ford        126.913   30.011 + 0.585
33.  Joe Nemechek        Chevrolet   126.905   30.013 + 0.587
34.  Greg Biffle         Ford        126.871   30.021 + 0.595
35.  Paul Menard         Chevrolet   126.842   30.028 + 0.602
36.  Bill Elliott        Ford        126.783   30.042 + 0.616
37.  Jamie McMurray      Ford        126.374   30.139 + 0.713
38.  Tony Raines         Chevrolet   126.332   30.149 + 0.723
39.  John Andretti       Dodge       126.199   30.181 + 0.755
40.  Sterling Marlin     Chevrolet   126.123   30.199 + 0.773
41.  Ricky Rudd          Ford        126.027   30.222 + 0.796
42.  Kevin Lepage        Dodge       126.433   30.125 + 0.699
43.  Chad Chaffin        Dodge       126.421   30.128 + 0.702