Jarrett Plays It Cool to Gain Pole

BROOKLYN, Mich. — Dale Jarrett drew one of the last qualifying positions Friday for the Miller 400, then made the most of it.

On a track cooling down after an unusually warm day in the Irish Hills of southern Michigan, Jarrett drove his Ford Thunderbird around Michigan International Speedway’s two-mile oval at 183.669 mph to wrest the pole position for Sunday’s Winston Cup stock car race from surprising Joe Nemechek.

Nemechek, whose wife Andrea gave birth to their first son on Wednesday, qualified at 183.379 mph in a Chevrolet Monte Carlo and appeared to have won the first pole of his career before Jarrett spoiled the celebration. Jarrett was the next-to-last driver on the track.

“I was sitting in the car waiting my turn and I could feel the temperature change,” Jarrett said. “It got cool and we got lucky. We never contemplated getting the pole, we went out hoping for a top-10 spot.”

Curiously, Jarrett’s time was the same, to the thousandth of a second, as he ran here last August when he went on to win the GM Goodwrench Dealer 400.

A crowd estimated at 40,000 watched 48 drivers take one lap at a time in qualifying.

“Hearing all those people cheering for one lap can really pump you up,” Jarrett said. “I’ll bet when this place first started, there wasn’t that big a crowd for the race. This is just another sign to show people that we’ve become a national sport when that many spectators sit all day to watch us run one lap at a time.”

Qualifying was so intense that only one second separated the first 42 drivers.

Only the top 25 qualified Friday, leaving such drivers as Bill Elliott, Ricky Rudd, Darrell Waltrip and John Andretti needing to qualify today to make Sunday’s 43-car field.