Southern 500 Starting Grid

Starting position is critical to running well at Darlington and a race has been won from the front row there 33 percent of the time. Matt Kenseth blistered the asphalt with a new track record, but the biggest news is that he bettered his average start by more than 20 positions.

Jeff Gordon has the best average start among Saturday's starters with a 6.76, and he padded that with his outside pole run.

Starting Grid

Start	Driver	Avg. Start at Track
1	Matt Kenseth	21.38
2	Jeff Gordon	6.76
3	Ryan Newman	9.00
4	Sam Hornish Jr	13.50
5	Joey Logano
6	Jeff Burton	21.30
7	Kasey Kahne	10.00
8	Kurt Busch	11.23
9	Carl Edwards	15.00
10	Marcos Ambrose
11	Greg Biffle	8.22
12	Mark Martin	13.07
13	Casey Mears	19.56
14	Kyle Busch	18.20
15	David Ragan	18.00
16	Martin Truex Jr	25.50
17	Clint Bowyer	14.75
18	Tony Stewart	17.18
19	Elliott Sadler	11.41
20	Jamie McMurray	16.00
21	David Reutimann	21.67
22	Max Papis
23	Denny Hamlin	14.00
24	Kevin Harvick	16.23
25	Juan Montoya	28.33
26	Dale Earnhardt Jr	15.87
27	Bobby Labonte	15.69
28	Robby Gordon	30.86
29	Regan Smith	22.50
30	David Gilliland	33.67
31	Brad Keselowski
32	Joe Nemechek	25.48
33	Dave Blaney	22.54
34	David Stremme	22.67
35	Brian Vickers	20.86
36	Michael Waltrip	23.19
37	Scott Riggs	23.50
38	A J Allmendinger	28.00
39	Tony Raines	38.00
40	Paul Menard	34.67
41	Reed Sorenson	28.00
42	Jimmie Johnson	12.00
43	Sterling Marlin	15.74