DOVER, Del. - Jeremy Mayfield needs more than a victory at Dover International Speedway to get back in the thick of the Nextel Cup championship race.

With his title hopes seriously damaged a week ago, Mayfield will try to use Sunday's MBNA America 400 to get back in the chase. He crashed last Sunday in New Hampshire after Robby Gordon intentionally spun Greg Biffle.

A 35th-place finish left Mayfield 142 points behind co-leaders Kurt Busch and Dale Earnhardt Jr. after the first of 10 races among the championship contenders. Lost were valuable points and great momentum achieved a week earlier when Mayfield qualified for title contention with a victory in Richmond, Va.

"I think we're going to have to do that every week from here on out to try to rebound from that thing," Mayfield said Friday after winning the pole for Sunday's race. "When the going gets tough we feel like we perform our best."

But Mayfield won't curse his bad luck.

"We kind of like being the underdog," he said. "We're going to fight it out to the end."

On Sunday, he won't qualify as anything but the favorite after taking the pole at The Monster Mile with a lap at 159.405 mph. That gave him a qualifying sweep this year on the high-banked concrete oval.

"Anytime you have a race track you run pretty good at you're confident," he said. "Now we've just got to go out and win the race and get back the points that were taken away from us last week."

Busch, who won the Sylvania 300, qualified 13th Friday. Earnhardt wound up 16th on the 43-car grid.

"I was happy with the first lap, but on the second we got pretty loose," Earnhardt said. "Sometimes it's like running across railroad tracks."

Busch was satisfied with his lap but said the team would continue to seek more speed.

"We're going to try two different setups in the car tomorrow morning and then in the second practice go with one of them," he said.

Ryan Newman, like Mayfield unlucky in New Hampshire, where he blew an engine late in the race, was second-fastest. His Dodge got around the track at 159.018.

"We'll just have to see what we can make the thing do in race trim," said Newman, who won both races here last year. "I think we can win again."

Newman, who fell 136 points off the pace, is not concerned about his engine.

"We realize what happened, and we fixed the thing," he said.

A surprising third in qualifying was rookie Brian Vickers. He did it in a backup car after crashing in practice. His Chevrolet went 158.346.

"We didn't get it back to where the first one was, but we got it close," he said. "I was just hoping for a solid starting spot. But we wound up with a great starting spot."

Elloitt Sadler, sixth in the points race, qualified fourth in a Ford at 158.249.

Michael Waltrip and former series champions Bobby Labonte and Rusty Wallace held down the next three spots. Reigning series champion and top-10 racer Matt Kenseth was next.

Jimmie Johnson, also in the championship chase, qualified ninth, followed by Jamie McMurray.

Chase participant Mark Martin, who won at Dover for the fourth time in June, goes from the 12th spot. Jeff Gordon, also a four-time Dover winner will start 21st. Gordon is nine points off the lead, a point ahead of Kenseth.

Tony Stewart, who also fell far back in the chase when he was involved secondarily in the Robby Gordon-Biffle spat, starts 23rd.