Rookie Drivers Blow by Veterans

Four fresh-faced rookies, Kasey Kahne and Brendan Gaughan in Dodges and Scott Riggs and Brian Vickers in Chevrolets, ignored a brisk wind that bothered many of the old-timers Friday to dominate the starting lineup for Sunday’s Auto Club 500, Round 10 of the Nextel Cup championship series.

Kahne, 24, took the pole, his third of the season, by rocketing the No. 9 Dodge Dealers car through a lap of 186.940 mph as the rookies grabbed four of the first six spots in the 43-car field.

Only veterans Joe Nemechek, who was second at 186.737 in a Chevrolet, and Jeff Green, in the legendary No. 43 made famous by Richard Petty, third at 186.316 in a Dodge, broke into the first-year driver parade.

“I love qualifying,” said Kahne, who only two years ago was driving midgets for Steve Lewis but is now part of Ray Evenham’s Dodge stable. “We put more effort into qualifying now than I ever did in Busch. We put two hours into it every Friday.”

Kahne, who could manage only a seventh-place starting position in qualifying for today’s Busch race earlier Friday, will be on the pole for the third time in only 10 Nextel Cup starts. He also started first at Las Vegas and Darlington.

He has yet to win, but three seconds and a third have helped make him this year’s highest-ranked rookie at 12th.

“I was very pleased with the lap,” the Enumclaw, Wash., native said. “It makes it even more fun when you’ve got [crew chief] Tommy Baldwin and all the other guys on this race team that give me this great car for qualifying. I need to thank everybody at the engine shop. I’m really looking forward to Sunday.”

The wind, which changed directions at times, posed a problem for many drivers, but Kahne said, “I just stayed in it, but it was exciting when I got loose off Turn 4.”

Nemechek, who was the pole-sitter for the inaugural Cup race at California Speedway in Fontana in 1997, said the hardest thing about the two-lap qualifying was keeping track of the wind.

“When I first went out, it was blowing really hard down the backstretch, and then later it changed so it was coming down the front straightaway,” said the Army-sponsored driver from Lakeland, Fla. “It was blowing pretty hard, definitely a factor.”

In seven years, no one has won the pole more than once at California Speedway, and no one has won from the pole.

Nemechek, 40, said the success of so many rookie drivers stemmed from the arrival of Jeff Gordon from the USAC open-wheel ranks in the early 1990s.

“Back when I was getting into Cup racing, you just didn’t have young guys getting into those cars,” he said. “Jeff Gordon hopped in with Hendrick Motorsports and it was a different deal. He struggled his first year, but in the 10 years that I’ve been here, it’s incredible how many dollars you spend and the engineers you have working and all the resources you have.

“It’s incredible. For a new guy coming in now, he gets hooked up with a team that has common sense and the dollars it takes to be competitive, and they’re going to run good.”

Gordon, the only two-time California Speedway winner, will start 16th in his DuPont Monte Carlo.

“It’s been a busy week,” said Gordon, who recently has gone scuba diving in the Bahamas, watched Phil Mickelson win the Masters at Augusta, judged a beauty pageant in Los Angeles, won his first race Sunday at Talladega, and was all smiles despite his qualifying effort.

“We’ve certainly had a smile from ear to ear all week long. Hopefully, we’ll carry that momentum through this week. I love California since I was born [in Vallejo] and grew up here. It wasn’t Southern California, but it’s always a pleasure to come back here. I’ve got a lot of fans who really love NASCAR racing.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr., the Nextel Cup points leader, had problems with the gusts and will start Sunday from the fifth row.

“I went down there into Turn 1 and the car just bottomed out the front valance and wouldn’t really turn too good,” he said. “But it was still a good lap, a good effort for us.

“California hasn’t been one of our good racetracks even though we got a sixth-place finish here last year. Hopefully with a good starting spot it will begin a good day on Sunday and we can keep it up.”

Michael Waltrip, Earnhardt’s DEI teammate, who turned 41 Friday, will start 17th.

*

Auto Club 500

* Site: California Speedway.

* Race: Sunday, 12:30 p.m., Ch. 11 (coverage begins at noon)

* Track: D-shaped oval, two miles, 14 degrees banking in turns.

* Distance: 500 miles, 250 laps.

* Champion: Kurt Busch.

* This season: There have been seven different winners in nine races, including the last five. Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Matt Kenseth have multiple victories.

* Next race: Chevy American Revolution 400, May 15, Richmond, Va.