Casey Mears sets record at Brickyard

INDIANAPOLIS, Aug. 7 (UPI) -- Casey Mears had a lap of 48.311 seconds Saturday to set a new Nextel Cup track record at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Mears broke the old mark of 48.822 seconds set in August 2003 by Kevin Harvick.

The pole victory was Mears' second consecutive pole and second of his Nextel Cup career. The second-year driver is the nephew of Rick Mears, who won the Indy 500 four times and also collected five Indy poles.

Ward Burton (48.546) will starting on the front row with Mears; Elliott Sadler (48.606) and Joe Nemechek (48.655) will start in row two; and Dale Earnhardt Jr. (48.657) will start fifth.

Series points leader Jimmie Johnson, who has scored a series-high 12 top-10 finishes in the 16 superspeedway races in 2004, will begin ninth. Johnson leads Jeff Gordon by 232 points.

The race is scheduled to begin Sunday at 2:30 p.m. (edt).