DEI Claims Front Row At Daytona With Menard, Martin

Daytona Beach, FL (AHN) - It's been a while since Dale Earnhardt Inc. was revered at Daytona International Speedway, but it certainly gained some respect on Friday.

Paul Menard, one of the company's top-performing drivers this season, earned the pole for Saturday's Coke Zero 400 Powered By Coca-Cola. Starting alongside him in the 18th race of the season will be teammate Mark Martin.

"It's obviously a good position to be in. We didn't focus on qualifying at all during practice, so I didn't know what we would have. I was really happy with how the car drove in the draft and just how fast it was. It had good speed, so I thought we would qualify really well,'' said Menard. "Hats off to everyone at DEI and Earnhardt Childress Engines. We had great power. The car was fast at Talladega, but we had a little more power in the engine today and that's what did it for us."

Martin announced earlier in the day that he will run fulltime next season for Hendrick Motorsports, but on this day it was the No. 8 Chevrolet of DEI that put him on the front row at Daytona for first time in 18 years.

"This is a blast,'' said Martin. "I'm just living a dream right now.''

In a small twist of irony, former DEI driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. will start behind the DEI cars in third and alongside fellow Chevrolet driver Joe Nemechek, who was the top go or go-home driver.

Johnny Sauter will roll off fifth. Rounding out the top-10 qualifiers were David Ragan, Boris Said, Regan Smith, Kyle Busch and Patrick Carpentier.

Failing to qualify for the race were Scott Riggs and J.J. Yeley.