Brian Vickers apparently didn't get the word.
The 25-year-old Red Bull Racing driver won the sixth pole of his career Friday, touring the 2-mile Auto Club Speedway oval at 183.429 mph. That relegated three-time reigning NASCAR Sprint Cup champion Johnson to the outside of the front row for the 500-mile race. Johnson had a lap at 183.164 mph.
The time difference was just 0.059 seconds.
"The only thing I can think is Vickers and I went to In-N-Out Burger last night and I had a double and he had a single," Johnson said, joking. "I guess that extra patty killed me."
Whatever the reason he was able to beat Johnson, the pole was big for Vickers, especially in the wake of the Daytona 500 controversy that was sparked when Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Vickers collided, setting off a 10-car crash.
Vickers had forced Earnhardt below the yellow out-of-bounds line on the 2.5-mile Daytona oval and Earnhardt turned back up the banking and hit Vickers, igniting the multicar crash and a whole lot of finger pointing.
"Obviously, the best way to move on from a situation or a controversy is to give them something else to talk about," Vickers said Friday. "And, so far, we've done that this week in a positive way.
"After what happened last week, controversy aside, the only thing that matters in my mind when I think about Daytona is we didn't collect the amount of points we needed or wanted to collect to race for a championship."
He said he and his team would love to put Daytona behind them going from the pole to lead every lap and win Sunday's race.
"I think the next challenge is going to be a lot more difficult than the first one," Vickers said.
But there wasn't much question about the pole.
"It was a perfect lap and the car handled amazing all the way around," Vickers said. "In any of the NASCAR series, but the Sprint Cup series especially, you just about have to have the perfect car and the perfect lap to sit on the pole. I've had some really good cars and some really good laps and been fifth."
Jamie McMurray was third at 182.653, followed by Kurt Busch at 182.556, Greg Biffle at 182.302, Jeff Gordon at 182.209, David Reutimann at 182.089 and A.J. Allmendinger, the fastest of the drivers who had to qualifying on speed, at 182.048.
Rookie Scott Speed, Vickers' teammate, was ninth at 181.965 and Kyle Busch, who won the pole for Saturday's Camping World Truck Series race earlier in the day, rounded out at the top 10 at 181.919.
Tony Stewart, racing for his own Stewart-Haas Racing team for only the second time in a Cup event, was 11th at 181.901, while Daytona 500 winner Matt Kenseth was 24th at 180.818.
Failing to make the lineup were Todd Bodine, Tony Raines, David Starr, Mike Garvey and Sterling Marlin.
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