Newman leads Dodge charge

CONCORD, N.C. - Dodge will have the top three starting spots in Sunday's Coca-Cola 600 as it tries to win for the first time this year.

Ryan Newman won the pole Thursday night at the Lowe's Motor Speedway at 185.312 mph and Kurt Busch , his Penske Racing South teammate, will be second at 185.066.

Car owner Roger Penske has 14 victories at the Indianapolis 500, but he remains winless at the Lowe's Motor Speedway .

"He's only been trying here for 20 years, so it would be special," Newman said. "But he's been at Indy for forty-something years. We can only try as hard as we can try. We have a great car for this weekend."

For Newman , the pole was his 39th in less than six full-time seasons.

"I felt like I could have had a better lap," he said. "They guys have done a great job in the last four or five weeks. We're not hitting our stride, but we're performing well. We haven't had the greatest finishes that we wanted or we felt we deserved. We had some crazy things happen to us.

"We've been in position before to win this race, but something seemed to happen to us. We've got a good car this year."

Elliott Sadler was third in another Dodge, while Dale Earnhardt Jr. was fourth and Matt Kenseth was fifth. The rest of the top-10 starters are Denny Hamlin in sixth, Ricky Rudd in seventh, Dave Blaney in eighth, Bobby Labonte in ninth and David Stremme in 10th.

Labonte and Stremme also are in Dodges.

Kasey Kahne gave Dodge it's last victory last October at Lowe's . He will be 18th on Sunday (5:30 p.m., Fox) at the start for the longest race in the Nextel Cup Series .

Dodge has been quick in qualifying this year, but the Charger hasn't been competitive on race day, especially when it get stuck in traffic. Dodge teams have a new front bumper this year, and all of them have struggled to make them comfortable when they get behind other cars.

"This is a great start for our weekend," Busch said. "That's always been the tough goal, whether it's the Charger or the new Avenger (for Car of Tomorrow) races. The car doesn't seem to want to run the full distance. We've definitely have had a good run in qualifying. We'll be open-minded and upbeat for Sunday. But it's tough."

Qualifying on Thursday locked the 43-car field for Sunday's race. Six drivers - Michael Waltrip , David Reutimann , Mike Bliss , Paul Menard , Ward Burton and Kevin Lepage - failed to make the race.

CHANGES AT ROUSH : Greg Biffle has a new crew chief - again.

Pat Tryson is out at Roush Fenway Racing and Greg Erwin will take over after Sunday's Coca-Cola 600.

Counting Doug Richert , Biffle is working with his third new crew chief in 12 races.

"We obviously weren't performing at a level at which Jack ( Roush , car owner) expected and a change was made," Biffle said. "It's pretty difficult for me. I don't have a real problem. I think the moral of the story here is that the team wasn't being operated the way that Jack wanted it operated, meaning when we were faltering a little bit on pit stops and weren't fast enough, he wanted us to make a change."

Biffle said Roush was particularly upset by routine pit stops of more than 14 seconds. Other teams constantly are about one second quicker doing the same work.

"You're in charge," Biffle said why Tryson was held responsible. "What you need is you've got to change your guys. Our guys weren't practicing enough, I guess."

While Erwin moved into a new role, so did Matt Borland . He left Dale Jarrett 's team earlier this month and now will serve as the competition director at Haas CNC Racing and its two drivers, Johnny Sauter and Jeff Green .

PIT STOPS: Michael Waltrip Racing had the indefinite suspensions lifted for crew chief David Hyder and general manager Bobby Kennedy , but he lost a truck driver. Hyder and Kennedy took most of the blame at the Daytona International Speedway after NASCAR found an illegal substance in the gas line of Waltrip 's Toyota . As they returned to the track, truck driver Douglas Mercier was fined $5,000 and suspended for making copies of his NASCAR license.

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