Mayfield rebounds by sweeping pole at Dover

He's had success on the high-banked concrete oval.
DOVER, Del. (AP) -- Jeremy Mayfield won the pole in qualifying Friday at Dover International Speedway, putting behind him a wreck that seriously damaged his championship hopes in the Nextel Cup series.
Mayfield crashed last Sunday at New Hampshire after Robby Gordon intentionally spun Greg Biffle. A finish of 35th left Mayfield 142 points behind co-leaders Kurt Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr. after the first of 10 races among the top 10 championship contenders.
But Mayfield won't curse his bad luck.
"We kind of like being the underdog," he said. "We're going to fight it out to the end."
On Sunday, he won't qualify as anything but the favorite in the MBNA 400 after taking the pole with ease. He got around The Monster Mile at 159.405 mph, giving him a qualifying sweep this year on the high-banked concrete oval.
"Any time you have a race track you run pretty good at you're confident," he said. "Now we've just got to go out and win the race and get back the points that were taken away from us last week."
Extremely valuable
Mayfield said a top starting spot on a narrow and treacherous track such as Dover is extremely valuable.
"Hopefully, that's going to keep us out of trouble," he said. "You have a better shot to stay out of a wreck."
Mayfield said the leadership of car owner Ray Evernham and the motivation of the team help him stay confident.
"If we were going to quit we could have done that before Richmond," he said.
Mayfield got his only victory of the season there two weeks ago, and that got him into the top 10.
Busch, who won the Sylvania 300, qualified 13th Friday. Earnhardt wound up 16th on the 43-car grid.
"I was happy with the first lap, but on the second we got pretty loose," Earnhardt said. "Sometimes it's like running across railroad tracks."
Newman second
Ryan Newman, also unlucky in New Hampshire, where he blew an engine late in the race, was second-fastest. His Dodge got around the track at 159.018.
"We'll just have to see what we can make the thing do in race trim," said Newman, who won both races here last year. "I think we can win again."
Newman, who fell 136 points off the pace, is not concerned about his engine.
"We realize what happened, and we fixed the thing," he said.
A surprising third in qualifying was rookie Brian Vickers. He did it in a backup car after crashing in practice. His Chevrolet went 158.346.
"We didn't get it back to where the first one was, but we got it close," he said. "When I saw the guys working as hard as they were I saw this coming.
"I was just hoping for a solid starting spot. But we wound up with a great starting spot."
Elliott Sadler, sixth in the points race, was fourth-fastest in a Ford at 158.249.
Other qualifiers
Michael Waltrip, and former series champions Bobby Labonte and Rusty Wallace held down the next three sports. Reigning series champion and top-10 racer Matt Kenseth was next.
Jimmie Johnson, also in the championship chase, qualified ninth, followed by Jamie McMurray.
Chase participant Mark Martin, who won here for the fourth time in June, goes from the 12th spot. Jeff Gordon, also a four-time Dover winner, will start 21st.
Tony Stewart, who also fell far back in the chase when he was involved secondarily in the Robby Gordon-Biffle spat, is 23rd.
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