Jeff Gordon kept tradition of Martinsville Speedway success alive.

Jeff Gordon continued his mastery of Martinsville Speedway Friday afternoon, winning the pole for Sunday’s Goody’s Cool Orange 500 NASCAR Sprint Cup race.

 It was Gordon’s seventh pole win at Martinsville, matching his seven race victories on the historic half-mile track. The pole win left him one short of Darrell Waltrip’s record eight poles

 Gordon turned in a near-perfect lap of 19.666 seconds (96.288 mph) around the .526-mile track in a Chevrolet to win the pole. Denny Hamlin, driving a Toyota, captured the outside pole with a lap of 19.775 seconds (95.757 mph).

 “We’ve been close to poles, we’ve won poles here, but rarely have we put a whole lap together at both ends of the race track the we way we did today,” said Gordon after capturing his 65th career pole. “It impressed me, I’ll be honest, to run that type of a lap. It tells you the great job the crew did today.”

 Hamlin was obviously pleased with his qualifying effort, but felt it could have been better.

 “It was a good lap for us. I missed my marks on my first lap and that typically was about one-tenth faster than what our second laps were,” said Hamlin. “I felt like we were good. It was just a little driver error there and had to kind of regroup in that second lap and kind of pull something at least salvageable together and it was good enough for where we ended up. It just tells us we have a car that is that versatile is going to be good for us on Sunday.”

 Rookie Aric Almirola surprised the field by nailing down the third starting spot in Sunday’s race, followed by David Ragan, and Jamie McMurray.

 Rounding out the top 10 were Kasey Kahne in seventh, Ken Schrader in seventh, Kyle Busch in eighth, Tony Stewart in ninth and Jimmie Johnson in 10th.

Tickets for both the Goody’s Cool Orange 500 on Sunday and the Kroger 250 on  Saturday can be purchased by calling 1.877.RACE.TIX, online at www.martinsvillespeedway.com or at the Martinsville Speedway ticket office.

 Ticket prices for the Goody’s Cool Orange 500 range from $42 to $80. Tickets for the Kroger 250 are $37 in advance, $42 on race day. Kroger 250 tickets for children ages 6 to 12 are $5.