Sat Mar 1 13:59:10 2008

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Vickers on pole for Sam's Town 300

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Las Vegas, NV (Sports Network) - Brian Vickers captured the pole for Saturday afternoon's Sam's Town 300 at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The No.32 Toyota circled the 1.5-mile speedway in 29.718 seconds (181.708 m.p.h.).

The pole victory was Vickers' first of the season and second of his Nationwide career.

Starting alongside Vickers will be Jeff Burton who posted a second-best time of 29.862 seconds.

Kyle Busch (30.026) and Tony Stewart (30.034) make up row two. Stewart owns back-to-back wins to start the season and lead Busch by 30 points. His win in California prevented Busch from making history. Busch leads the Craftsman Truck Series and the Sprint Cup Series and a win in the Stater Bros. 300 would have made him the first driver in NASCAR history to lead all three national series' at the same time.

But Busch came up short at Fontana. He passed more cars than Stewart, but that's because Stewart led nearly every lap. In all, the No.20 Toyota led 138 of 150 laps yielding the lead only during green-flag pit stops.

"The car was awesome," said Stewart after the race. "It was so fast all you had to do was run your pace and those guys would wear their tires out trying to stay with us."

"Tony was pretty much in a league of his own, for some reason," Busch said.

Busch will likely start at the back of the field after crashing his Toyota on the second qualifying lap.

The race is scheduled to drop the green flag on Saturday at 4:30 p.m. (et).