Gilliland learns fast at Daytona

Newcomer David Gilliland of Riverside again stunned NASCAR’s premier Nextel Cup series Sunday by winning the pole position for its premier race, the Daytona 500.

Gilliland, an obscure short-track driver in California only a year ago, ran a qualifying lap of 186.320 mph in his No. 38 Ford Fusion to secure the first spot on a cool, breezy day at the Daytona International Speedway.

He did so a day after finishing a close second to winner Tony Stewart in the Budweiser Shootout, a 70-lap sprint that opened a week of racing here that culminates with the 500.

It was the first time Gilliland, 30, had raced on Daytona’s famed 2.5-mile, high-banked oval.

Starting next to Gilliland on the front row of the season-opening 500 will be Ricky Rudd, a 50-year-old veteran and Gilliland’s teammate at the Robert Yates Racing team.

Rudd just returned to the sport after a one-year layoff to drive the No. 88 Ford and has been teaching Gilliland how to handle tracks such as Daytona.

“What are the odds of that?” Gilliland said of the Yates sweep. “It’s unbelievable. Every time we’ve gone out, we’ve gotten faster and faster. We feel like we’ve got a race car good enough to win the 500.”

Only the two front-row positions were set Sunday under the 500’s complex qualifying format. The rest of the 43-car lineup will be determined by two 150-mile qualifying heats Thursday.

But not before another cheating scandal marred qualifying here.

NASCAR announced that Matt Kenseth’s No. 17 Ford and Kasey Kahne’s No. 9 Dodge failed inspection because of illegal holes in the cars’ bodies aimed at improving their aerodynamics. And Michael Waltrip’s No. 55 Toyota Camry was impounded because of a suspicious substance found in the engine manifold. Waltrip was allowed to qualify after replacing the manifold, but NASCAR still plans to inspect the car.

Kenseth and Kahne must start at the rear in Thursday’s heats and other penalties are expected to be announced this week, said NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter. Asked if any crew chiefs might be suspended, he said he “wouldn’t rule that out.”

A year ago, Jimmie Johnson’s crew chief Chad Knaus was suspended for four races, including the 500, and fined $25,000 after officials found unapproved aerodynamic changes to Johnson’s Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. Johnson won the Daytona 500 anyway.

Bending the rules also has a long tradition in stock car racing, but Hunter said, “We are committed to try to stop all the games being played. NASCAR is charged with maintaining the integrity in that garage area.”

Another newcomer to NASCAR, former Formula One driver Juan Pablo Montoya, was fourth-fastest in qualifying in his No. 42 Dodge owned by Chip Ganassi and Felix Sabates.

Kicking off the qualifying session was Toyota driver Brian Vickers of the new Red Bull team, marking the first time in decades that a foreign-based carmaker attempted to qualify for a NASCAR race.

But Vickers and six other Toyota drivers struggled to find speed. Vickers was 43rd and the fastest Toyota was driven by David Reutimann in 14th.

Another Californian, Boris Said of Carlsbad, clinched a spot in the 500 by posting the sixth-fastest speed Sunday in his SoBe No Fear Ford. Said, mainly a road-racing driver, won the pole at the Pepsi 400 here last July.

But the 500 hopes of James Hylton, 72, who’s seeking to become the oldest driver in a Cup race, appeared dim. His was the 60th-slowest car out of 61 drivers and his Chevrolet was nearly seven mph slower than Gilliland’s car.

Gilliland, the son of West Coast racer Butch Gilliland, honed his skills at California tracks such as Irwindale and Perris with cars he and others mostly built in Riverside.

The younger Gilliland doubted whether he’d ever reach NASCAR’s big leagues. But after he unexpectedly won a race in its second-tier Busch Series last summer in Kentucky, Yates hired Gilliland, who now lives in Mooresville, N.C., for the Cup series and he drove the last 14 races of the season.

They included the fall race at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, where Gilliland also won the pole. He finished 15th in that race.

“He’s a hungry race car driver,” Gilliland’s crew chief, veteran Todd Parrott, said when asked to explain Gilliland’s surge. “He has a lot of heart, a lot of desire.”

james.peltz@latimes.com