Martin captures the Capital City 400 pole at Richmond

[media-credit name=”Brad Keppel” align=”alignright” width=”258″][/media-credit]Mark Martin qualified late and captured the pole for Sunday’s Sprint Cup Series Capital City 400 at Richmond International Raceway with a lap of 128.327 MPH (21.04 secs).

“I tried to get it on the first lap. I really didn’t want to run the second lap. I knew I was going to be close to wrecking and I didn’t want to wreck the car and when he (Rodney Childers, crew chief) didn’t call me off on the first lap, I knew that we hadn’t got it.” Martin said. “I had to buckle down and try to get a little bit more that second lap. It’s just a tribute to everybody that supports us at MWR (Michael Waltrip Racing).”

This was Martin’s second pole of the season and the 53rd of his career.

Martin captured his first pole at Richmond 31 years ago.  He also breaks the previous record of the oldest pole winner at Richmond (53 years, 3 months, 19 days).

“I think a lot of guys like to see an old dude like me pull one off every once in a while. It’s pretty cool. Carl’s (Edwards) a good dude. It’ll be there other way around next time probably.” Martin said.

Carl Edwards qualified second, Kevin Harvick third, A.J. Allmendinger fourth and Kyle Busch qualified 5th.

“That is a good lap and we have Ford EcoBoost on the car which is a great product and hopefully this is a top-five or six starting spot. We have a better race trim package than we do a qualifying trim package so I am excited about that.” Edwards said.

Dale Earnhardt Jr. led the final practice session and qualified 10th. Teammates Jeff Gordon 6th, Kasey Kahne 9th, and Jimmie Johnson qualified 27th.

Series points leader Greg Biffle qualified 28th.

“I don’t know what happened there. I just guess we didn’t have the grip we needed. I was probably just a little bit tight in the center I guess and that was all the grip I had. It was all that I could do.” Biffle said.