Martinsville, Va. ? Jeff Gordon is the most monotonous driver at Martinsville Speedway, and that’s not something he should be seeking to change.

Gordon won his third consecutive pole on the oldest and shortest track on the Nextel Cup circuit in qualifying Friday. He’ll try for his third straight win Sunday and sixth overall on the flat and narrow .526-mile oval.

The four-time series champion wasted no time demonstrating his mastery over Martinsville. As the second of 44 drivers to make a qualifying run for the Advance Auto Parts 500, Gordon got his Chevrolet around at 93.502 mph.

“It’s nice when you come to a track like Martinsville and you’ve got confidence in your driving and the team has confidence in setting up the car,” he said. “It just makes the chemistry click that much better.”

That teamwork paid off in two hours of practice before qualifying.

“We came with our basic setup that we sat on the pole here the last time with and we had to make some adjustments,” Gordon said. “We tweaked on it and at the end of practice, I felt like we hit on some things.”

They clearly did.

“I took off and the car did everything I really wanted it to do,” Gordon said. “I couldn’t ask for much more than I got out of the car.”

Jamie McMurray took the outside of the front row, turning a lap at 93.239 in a Dodge. Ryan Newman was third, also in a Dodge, at 93.102, He was followed by Dale Earnhardt Jr., who went 93.015 in a Chevy.

The pole is Gordon’s first of the year — and the first since he won it here last fall. It’s the 47th of his career, and fifth at Martinsville.

“The track doesn’t change that much from race to race and year to year,” he said. “It’s a little bit easier to get back into the swing of things, back into that groove. It’s just one of those tracks.”

Junqueira tops at Long Beach

Long Beach, Calif. — Bruno Junqueira got a clear lap and Paul Tracy didn’t. That was the difference Friday. Junqueira, last year’s runner-up to Tracy in the Champ Car World Series championship, won the first point of the season by beating Tracy for the provisional pole on opening day at the Long Beach Grand Prix.

“It was a good first day of the season,” said Junqueira, whose fast lap on the 1.968-mile downtown street circuit was clocked at 1 minute, 8.913 seconds — a run of 102.808 mph. “There was a lot of traffic out there, but I got one good lap and that was enough.”

There was plenty of speculation that this day would never happen after CART, the former sanctioning body of the Champ Car series, went bankrupt after last season.

Team owners Paul Gentilozzi, Kevin Kalkoven and Gerald Forsythe saved the circuit by forming Open Wheel Racing Series, buying CART’s assets and continuing the series that began in 1979.

Tracy’s fast lap of 1:09.156 (102.447) was just .243 seconds slower than that of Junqueira. Tracy said a red flag for Oriol Servia’s crash early in the session cost him one possible fast lap and he couldn’t get a clean run after that.

Wheldon wins Indy Japan pole

Motegi, Japan — Dan Wheldon is hoping his second straight pole position will translate into a win for Honda in the Indy Japan 300.

The 25-year-old Englishman, driving a Dallara-Honda, captured the pole Friday with a lap of 205.762 mph on the 1.5-mile Twin Ring Motegi circuit. American Greg Ray, also driving a Honda-powered car, was second-fastest in qualifying.