Biffle claims tight pole
Greg Biffle won his first pole in more than a year, nipping Kurt Busch for the top spot in NASCAR Nextel Cup qualifying Friday night at Atlanta Motor Speedway in Hampton, Ga.
Biffle turned a lap of 192.453 mph, while Busch had a 192.427 on the 1.5-mile oval. The difference between the top two laps was 0.004 seconds.
Biffle, who earned his fourth career pole and first since May 2006 at Richmond, is on a bit of a late-season roll after failing to make it into the 12-man Chase for the championship. The Roush Fenway Racing driver has three top-10 finishes in his last five starts, including his first win of the season last month at Kansas.
Dale Jarrett was third fastest heading into Sunday’s Pep Boys Auto 500.
Carpentier enters Cup races
Longtime open-wheel star Patrick Carpentier will attempt to qualify for the Cup race at Phoenix and Homestead, replacing Scott Riggs in the No. 10 Gillette-Evernham Motorsports Dodge.
Carpentier was already set to replace Riggs in the GEM entry in 2008. But the team decided to get a head start. He will also drive a second GEM Busch Series car at Homestead.
Hmiel signs with Ganassi
Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates has hired former Dale Earnhardt Inc. director of technical operations Steve Hmiel as manager of competition.
Ganassi said managing director John Fernandez will continue to manage the long-term strategic direction of the team’s race operations, while Hmiel will focus on the competition management and preparation, including race engineering. Both Hmiel and Fernandez will report directly to Ganassi.
LMS track could be replaced
Bruton Smith said he’d like to replace Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C., with a new track somewhere in the Charlotte area.
The Speedway Motorsports Inc. chairman and CEO insisted that it had nothing to do with fighting the city council of Concord over zoning laws.
Smith said he and his staff at the Concord track have been working on “a master plan” for improvements to Lowe’s, which was built at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1960 and has been expanded and improved numerous times.