Waltrip lands Jarrett, UPS for new team

Dale Jarrett already was preparing to walk away from Robert Yates Racing at the end of the year. Now his corporate sponsor is following him out the door.

UPS announced Friday that it will leave the Yates team at the end of this season, moving with Jarrett to Michael Waltrip’s startup Nextel Cup team for 2007.

It’s a major boost for Waltrip, who is starting a team nearly from scratch but now finds himself in the enviable position of having three fully sponsored cars next year when he only expected to have two.

He’ll also have significant financial backing from Toyota, which is making its entry to the Nextel Cup series next year.

“Is it a coup? For our team, I guess it’s fair to say it is,” Waltrip said. “Because we know the infrastructure that we need to build in order to compete with the teams that are winning today, and this allows us to build that infrastructure at a faster pace. Money buys speed – that’s obvious.”

NASCAR Nextel Cup

Jeff Burton took the top spot for Sunday’s race at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill., with a lap of 181.647 mph. Earlier this year, Burton won the pole for the season-opening Daytona 500.

Brian Vickers qualified second Friday, followed by Kasey Kahne, Kevin Harvick and Jimmie Johnson.

Last year’s Chicagoland winner, Dale Earnhardt Jr., will start 25th.

Champ Car

A.J. Allmendinger, a 24-year-old Californian, who is the only American driver in Champ Car, turned two consecutive fast laps over the 1.755-mile course Molson Grand Prix of Toronto course to give him the provisional pole for Sunday’s race.

The fastest lap, 58.621 seconds (107.777 mph), guaranteed him a front row start for the third straight race, no matter what he does in final time trials today.