TALLADEGA AL (10-5-06) - ARCA RE/MAX Series veteran Bobby Gerhart is known as the “Restrictor Plate King” for good reason. The Pennsylvania native is the 2001 ARCA RE/MAX Series Talladega race winner, and has won at Daytona International Speedway four times (1999, 2002, 2005, 2006). Gerhart showed off his superspeedway prowess Thursday afternoon at Talladega, where he claimed his third career Talladega Pork Pole and ninth overall with a speed of 189.485 mph (50.537 seconds) around the 2.66-mile superspeedway. He sits on the Pork Pole for Friday’s Food World 250 ARCA RE/MAX Series race alongside Juan Pablo Montoya.

“We came here and tested a few weeks ago and the track was a lot faster than I expected it would be so we actually went back to the shop and decided to bring a whole different car here this weekend,” said Gerhart. “Talladega did a beautiful job with the repaving job. It’s really an honor just to be here.”

Formula 1 veteran Montoya, who has entered this weekend’s ARCA RE/MAX Series race to help make the transition from open wheel cars to stock cars, qualified second in a No. 4 Texaco-Havoline Dodge for Chip Ganassi Racing. Montoya, with an average speed of 189.451 mph, missed the pole by one, one-hundredth of a second.

Matt Hagans, Frank Kimmel and AJ Henriksen rounded out the top-five.

The ARCA RE/MAX Series will hold a final practice session on Friday from 9-10 a.m. Limited impound procedures will be in place for the one-hour practice session in which teams can only make a limited number of pre-approved adjustments. The Food World 250 is slated to roll off at 4:30 p.m. local central time. The race will be aired same-day on SPEED beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern.