FORT WORTH, Tex. - Bobby Labonte spent most of Friday's practice session at Texas Motor Speedway working on the race day setup on his Interstate Batteries Chevrolet. He savehis best lap for pole qualifying.
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While others were trying to find speed during practice, Labonte was content with being a little slower and a lot more comfortable. But when it came time to run one fast lap, he ripped around the 1.5-mile raceway at 193.903 mph to win the pole for Sunday's Samsung/RadioShack 500.
"The older you get, you have to pick and chose your fast laps," Labonte said.
At 39, Labonte has learned to pace himself. He only ran one lap during time trials while most of the other drivers ran two. He figured he got everything possible out of his car, so there wasn't any reason to push his luck for a second lap.
"The car stuck like glue," he said. "I don't know if I could have done much better. The big thing is we've got to make sure we've got the car handling really good. You can go fast for one lap. You have to make sure it's not too loose, not too tight. You have to have a good balance and a good engine. My team would have needed to work on the car a little bit more if we wanted to go fast for a second lap."
Bill Elliott, 48 and in semi-retirement, also knows how to pick fast laps at the right time. His Dodge was second-fastest at 193.729 mph.
Labonte said the threat of rain today prompted him to work on Sunday's setup. The bad weather, however, is supposed to move through the area in time for Sunday's race (1 p.m., FOX).
Reach Don Coble at doncoble@bellsouth.net.
TIME HEALS WOUNDS: Nearly a week has passed since Jamie McMurray ran into Matt Kenseth twice during the cool-down lap at the Bristol Motor Speedway, and in that time McMurray said he realizes his tantrum wasn't necessary.
"I knew better. I've watched a lot of people do that and thought 'that was an idiot. What was he thinking?' When you spend all day racing at that place and somebody takes away from you in the last 100 feet or 200 feet, you just want to get them back," McMurray said. "I knew it wasn't going to do any good, but it's the only thing you can do."
McMurray was fined $10,000 by NASCAR and placed on probation.
The driver also apologized to Kasey Kahne Friday for their early-race accident that sent Kahne's Dodge into the first turn wall.
"I went up and apologized to him and told him I'd be very careful around him from here on out," McMurray said.
The Nextel Cup Series is off next week, then it returns to the half-mile Martinsville Speedway on April 18. That race, like races at Bristol, usually has a lot of crashes and angry drivers.
"Martinsville is coming up and that's just as bad as Bristol," McMurray said. "So we'll see what happens."
THE BUSCH RACE: Rookie Kyle Busch will start on the pole for today's O'Reilly Auto Parts 300 for the NASCAR Busch Series.
Busch, the younger brother of Nextel Cup driver Kurt Busch, qualified at 189.847 mph in a Hendrick Motorsports-prepared Chevrolet.
Greg Biffle will start second, followed by David Green in third, Joe Nemechek in fourth, Martin Truex Jr. in fifth, Clint Bowyer in sixth, Johnny Sauter in seventh, Kasey Kahne in eighth, Bobby Labonte in ninth and Bobby Hamilton Jr. in 10th.
The Busch Series race will start at 2 p.m. (FOX).
PIT STOPS: New rumors surfaced this week in the garage area as NASCAR looks to revamp its schedule for 2005. Now included in the reported plans to add a second race at the Texas Motor Speedway are the rumored plans to add second races at Phoenix, Las Vegas and Kansas City. To make that happen, the Darlington and Pocono raceways would each lose one race and Watkins Glen International would lose its only race. Another hot rumor is NASCAR's interest in permanently moving the road course race at Watkins Glen to a road course in Mexico City. ... Ken Patterson, 38, the popular public relations director at the Talladega Superspeedway, died Friday following a brief battle with cancer. He is survived by his wife and two children, including a son born in January.
