LOUDON, N.H. -- Ronnie Silk took the pole and the checkers the last time the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour was at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. He’ll try to do the same this weekend after taking the pole in Friday’s qualifying for the Town Fair Tire 100 on Saturday.

Silk’s time of 29.492 seconds (129.147 mph) was nearly fourth-tenths of a second faster than Ryan Preece, who will start on the outside of Row 1 on Saturday. Doug Coby, Eric Berndt and Sprint Cup regular Ryan Newman round out the top five qualifiers.

“We spent time after practice changing everything we could and the car handled real well for qualifying,” said Silk, who won last September’s New Hampshire 100. “We’re looking forward to the race tomorrow.”

Coby, who leads Silk by 20 points in the overall standings, has struggled at “The Magic Mile” in the past, but attributes a practice session in May to his success on Friday.

“We learned a lot from that session,” said Coby. “We had to change some things today, but that (session) helped us out a whole lot.”

Saturday’s Town Fair Tire 100 is slated to drop the green flag at 1 p.m.

For more details and ticket information on events at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, or to purchase tickets to the LENOX Industrial Tools 301 and SYLVANIA 300 NASCAR weekends, please stop by our Ticket Office, visit the speedway website at www.nhms.com, or call our Ticket Hotline at (603) 783-4931.