Daytona Beach, Fla. ? Friends are as hard to come by as victories for Kevin Harvick these days. Acquiring a reputation as a reckless bad sport on a losing streak can do that to a guy.

Harvick has reason to think his fortunes might be changing, though. He won the first Winston Cup pole position of his career Friday, qualifying first for the Pepsi 400.

Harvick, who took over the car Dale Earnhardt drove after the Intimidator died last year, circled the 2.5-mile Daytona track at 185.041 mph. That was a healthy 0.668 mph faster than second-place qualifier Geoffrey Bodine, a restrictor-plate specialist racing in just his fourth event of the season.

Defending Winston Cup champion Jeff Gordon (184.271) will go for his first victory of the season from the third position. Harvick’s Richard Childress Racing teammate, Robby Gordon, qualified fourth (184.268) for Saturday night’s race.

Harvick, mired in 32nd place in the points standings, is seeking his first victory of this season.

“We’ve had a lot of bad luck,” he said simply.

When Earnhardt died last February, Harvick was forced to sit behind the wheel of a repainted version of the car that would have belonged to NASCAR’s most famous driver.

Harvick, who also raced in and won the Busch series championship last year, handled the pressure well.

He won two races including the race in Atlanta three weeks after Earnhardt’s death and finished second three times.

In March, he tangled with Greg Biffle in a Busch race and was put on probation through August. A few weeks later, he intentionally spun out Coy Gibbs during a truck race. NASCAR fined him $35,000 for that one and took the unprecedented step of suspending Harvick for a race.

His critics took to calling him The Instigator an unflattering twist on Earnhardt’s famous Intimidator tag.

He wrecked in the Daytona 500, at the NAPA Auto Parts 500 in Fontana and ran into various other problems elsewhere.

He has finished in the top-5 only once.

Da Matta posts fast lap, then crashes in qualifying

Toronto Right now, everything is going just right for Cristiano da Matta. The diminutive Brazilian crashed during Friday’s provisional qualifying for the Toronto Molson-Indy, but not until after he had posted the fastest lap of the one-hour session.

With the left front tire hanging from the suspension, da Matta was still able to drive the car into a safe area behind the concrete wall and avoid bringing out a red flag and losing his fastest lap.

“That just happens sometimes,” said da Matta, who insured himself a front-row start in Sunday’s race and increased his lead over countryman Bruno Junqueira in the CART FedEx Series by one point to 26.

“You have to try very hard in qualifying because the competition is so good,” da Matta added. “That was my first (crash) of the season, though, so it’s not so bad.”

Da Matta’s fast lap on the 1.755-mile street course winding through Exhibition Place on the edge of downtown Toronto was 58.487-seconds, or 108.024 mph. Junqueira was next at 107.588.

Barrichello on a roll, even on wet track

Silverstone, England Rubens Barrichello showed he can drive in the rainy English weather. The financially strapped Arrows team might not get a chance in the British Grand Prix.

Barrichello learned to handle the slick track in testing in wet conditions a month ago at Silverstone.

It paid off Friday as Barrichello was quicker than teammate Michael Schumacher as light showers fell during practice.

Dry track or wet track, Barrichello is on a roll.

The Brazilian clocked 1 minute, 31.457 seconds and was followed by Schumacher (1:31.881). The rest of the lagging field was 2-to-3 -three seconds behind.

Giancarlo Fisichella of Jordan (1:33.434) was third and followed by Juan Pablo Montoya of BMW Williams (1:33.842), Takuma Sato of Jordan (1:33.901) and Jacques Villeneuve of BAR Honda (1:34.373).

“I am happy with the work today,” said Barrichello, who won the European Grand Prix two weeks ago, the second victory of his career.