54 cars entered first-round qualifying on February 9; due to NASCAR's qualifying procedure only 43 could race. Unlike most races during the season, the qualifying session determined the first two position, while the rest of the field qualified by the 2002 Gatorade 125s. Each driver was limited to two timed laps, with the starting order determined by the competitor's fastest times. Johnson was the fourth driver to venture onto the track; he took the maiden pole position of his career, and his first in a NASCAR-sanctioned event since he debuted in the series at the 1998 Busch Series, with a time of 48.431 seconds. He became the third rookie driver in history to claim pole position for the Daytona 500 after Loy Allen Jr. in the 1994 event and Skinner in the 1997 race. Johnson was joined on the grid's front row by Harvick who was sixteen-thousands of a second slower, after a driver error in the third and fourth turns on his second lap. This meant for the first time in history, the Daytona 500 featured two rookie drivers starting in the first two grid positions. After qualifying, Johnson said, "We've shown our hand during testing and practice. We didn't want to fool ourselves into thinking we had a magic three- or four-tenths hidden somewhere. We thought that some other guys had an ace in their back pockets, and we didn't expect Kevin Harvick to jump up there."