David Green wins Busch pole

ROCKINGHAM, N.C., Feb. 21 (UPI) -- David Green secured the third Busch pole of his career Friday for Saturday's Rockingham 200 at a rainy North Carolina Motor Speedway.

Green -- a full-time Busch series driver -- put a Pontiac on the pole with a fast lap of 154.429 miles per hour. That knocked Winston Cup rookie Jamie McMurray off the pole after he ran a lap at 154.318 mph in a Dodge Intrepid.

"Today was probably the worst conditions we've had to work through at Rockingham because of all the rain," Green said. "Everybody is here with a new deal. With all the rain, we were doing race stuff.

"We didn't get to make a qualifying effort with all the other guys. These are the guys who were with Jamie McMurray last year. We put that all together. With the new Pontiac we have this year, it worked almost flawless. It was almost a picture-perfect deal."

Scott Riggs was third in a Ford Taurus at 154.046 mph, followed by Kasey Kahne's 153.419 mph in a Ford and Jason Keller's 153.317 mph, also in a Ford.

Green credits his experience at the tricky 1.017-mile oval for being able to win the pole while many of the rookies in the field qualified much further down in the field.

"It showed today that teams can rise to the occasion," Green said. "From a driver's aspect, having experience here is added icing on the cake."

One of those rookies was Chad Blount of Walkerton, Ind., who was the highest-starting rookie at 24th with a lap at 150.098 mph.

There was a tremendous discrepancy in speed between Green's pole-winning lap at 154.429 and the slowest in the field -- Brian Weber's 130.668 mph.