He holds the current track record at Richmond International Raceway and Friday afternoon Brian Vickers captured the pole for Saturday night’s Crown Royal Presents The Russ Friedman 400. While he did not beat his record setting lap, Vickers did earn his second pole of the 2009 season with a lap of 21.238 seconds at a speed of 127.131 mph.

After Vickers locked up the top-spot, very few challengers were able to come close to his fast lap, but veteran Jeff Gordon gave it a try. Running a qualifying lap of 21.286 seconds at 126.84 mph, the driver of the No. 24 DuPont Chevrolet locked himself on the outside of the front row for Saturday night’s event.

“Great effort for us. Very happy with that,” Gordon said of his qualifying run. “You always pick the lap apart trying to figure out where you could be a little bit better no matter where you qualify, but especially when you are that close to being on the pole. Brian laid down a great lap, obviously the lap to beat. We came close, but not good enough.”

Hometown favorite Denny Hamlin posted the third-fastest time and hopes to repeat his dominance performance of one year ago – this time with better results.

“With Brian and Jeff on the front row it should take at least a half lap to get around them,” Hamlin joked as Gordon walked into the media center. “That’s just a unique opportunity – that just doesn’t happen that often as competitive as our sport is. You just don’t have cars that are dominant through the course of a race like that. I think it was just an extreme circumstance where we happened to get lucky and hit the right set up that day. Dominant days like that aren’t that often, once every five years.”

Martin Truex Jr., who posted the fastest time in the day’s opening practice session, was fourth fastest in his Earnhardt Ganassi Chevrolet, while Jeff Burton rounded out the top-5 in the No. 31 Chevy.

Piloting the car that went to Victory Lane last weekend at Talladega, Mike Bliss was the fastest of the go-or-go-home cars with the sixth-fastest lap of the session. Trevor Boys and Todd Bodine were the only two drivers that were unable to make the show on time.

Saturday’s Crown Royal Presents The Russ Friedman 400 is scheduled for 7:30pm E.T.

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