Duhamel gets another Rolex

Yeah, he'll take two.

Five-time Daytona 200 winner Miguel Duhamel made a big first step toward win No. six when he secured the pole position for the 65th running of the storied race in qualifying Thursday.

Duhamel's time of 1 minute, 40.928 seconds on his Honda CBR600RR trumped Yamaha's Jason DiSalvo by 0.086 of a second.

It was a game of one-upmanship by the two factory riders, with Duhamel setting an early top time of 1.41.168 on lap 19, just to be topped by DiSalvo's 1:41.014 one lap later. Duhamel came in for fresh rubber as time ticked down and went back out and grabbed the pole on his 22nd lap.

"It feels great," said Duhamel, who now has two Daytona 200 pole positions in his career. "The beauty of daytona...is you put some great laps together and someone gets a better draft and you don't get the pole. So to come out and get one by yourself feels great."

It will be a full factory front-row for the Daytona 200, which will kick off the 2006 Lockhart-Phillips USA Formula Xtreme series. Yamaha's Eric Bostrom had the third fastest time, a 1:41.341, and Honda's Jake Zemke put down a 1:41.911 for the fourth fastest time.

Duhamel said he welcomes the additional factory competition this year.

"Yamaha put together a big effort to come out and take it away from us," Duhamel said. "Yamaha stepped up, but we're out there to show them that the step is a little bigger than maybe they thought it was."

© 2006, American Motorcyclist Association