Continuing to show his team's improvement, Michael Waltrip Racing's David Reutimann earned his first career pole position in just his sixty-seventh Cup Series start. Reutimann posted as fast lap of 31.462 seconds at a speed of 171.636 mph. By taking the top-spot, Reutimann now has a pole position in all three of NASCAR's top series.

"It feels great," Reutimann, who was fourth in practice, explained. "We unloaded pretty fast and we just worked on it a little bit at a time and progressively made it a little better."

Perhaps carrying a bit of good luck with him, prior to qualifying, Reutimann was given a card friend and photographer Bob Brand. The card had an old picture of Reutimann's father Buzzy's race car and the driver of the No. 44 put it in his pocket for the lap.

"Maybe I should start carrying that more often with me," Reutimann added. "Either that or my old man was driving the car for me. Either way it was a good lap and I'm proud of my guys."

Running better and better as of late, Reutimann and the entire Michael Waltrip Racing team has a long way in a short time. Last year, Friday was an agonizing day for Reutimann who was often outside the top-35 and required to make the show on time.

Our team is a second year organization. Last year, we were just worried about getting in races, much less worrying about poles. Our team's come an extremely long way, we still have more ground to cover, but we?re getting closer."

Scott Speed showed a bunch of speed as he put the No. 83 Red Bull Toyota on the outside of the front row. Posting a lap of 31.494 seconds at 171.461 mph, Speed earned his best career start in just his fifth career start. With the No. 84 outside the top-35 in owner points, Red Bull Racing Team officials opted to put Speed in the No. 83 this weekend to guarantee him a spot in the field, but judging by his lap, he didn't need it.

Last year's Homestead winner, Matt Kenseth, was able to post the third fastest time with a lap of 31.500 seconds at a speed of 171.429 mp. Not very fast in practice - 28th on the board - and still winless in 2009, Kenseth is optimistic about starting up front.

"I'm looking forward to starting up there," Kenseth explained. "I haven't been able to win yet this year and it's kind of our last shot, so I had a really good qualifying lap. It didn't feel very good and I didn't think I did a great job, but we had a lot of speed in the car, so if we can get it to drive right, at least we know the speed is there."

Carl Edwards posted the fastest lap early on in the session - 31.502 seconds at 171.418 mph - but at the end of qualifying ended up in the fourth-spot. Needing to dominate the weekend and have Jimmie Johnson stumble, Edwards has a glimmer of hope. While he was able to put the No. 99 Office Depot Ford Fusion in the top-5, Jimmie Johnson was only able to muster the 30th-place starting position.

"Just the fact that we're starting in front of Jimmie, that's a small victory for us," Edwards said at the end of the session. "The better chance we can have, the better pit stall selection we can have, the more traffic he's in, all of those things add up to a better chance for us to make this Cinderella story happen and come back from nowhere and win this."

The Cup cars have two practice sessions scheduled for Saturday, with the Ford 400 beginning at 3:45 pm E.T. Sunday afternoon.