The one and only NASCAR Cup Series practice of championship weekend at Homestead-Miami Speedway has concluded on Friday night, with Chase Briscoe sitting atop the speed charts with a 32.680s (165.238mph) lap.
He beat Austin Cindric by 0.073s, while distant title challengers Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell were third and fourth, respectively. Ryan Blaney rounded out the top five.
Championship leader Kyle Larson was tenth in single-lap speeds, and found the wall several times as he worked the highest groove around the 1.5-mile intermediate track, suffering slight damage on the right-side of his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. He wasn’t alone in brushing the wall, with Joey Logano among those who also got up into it during the session.
Watch: Kyle Larson flirts with the limits, scrapes wall in practice
Cindric also led five-lap averages, while his Penske teammate Blaney led 10, 15, 20, 25, and even 30-lap averages. Briscoe, Tyler Reddick, and Ty Gibbs also looked strong over the course of a long run. Bell appeared to be the best among the three title contenders in the same category.
“That’s probably pretty excessive,” said Larson about his wall contact after the session. “Yeah, I just didn’t feel very good. I don’t know, I didn’t feel comfortable for the first few laps, and then I would feel okay, and then I just didn’t have enough grip to run the wall like I needed to. I’ll just have to kind of think about that and what I was doing wrong, and then listen to my teammates, kind of what they had to say about their cars. But just a disconnect and (lack of) comfort, I guess, from the first few laps to the end of whatever. I didn’t get to run super long, but, I’m getting glued — stuck in the wall. So, yeah, that was not a great practice, but I haven’t really even gotten to dive into it yet.”
Reddick pit road accident
At the end of practice, there was an unusual incident as Tyler Reddick was attempting to perform a mock pit stop, but slammed into the back of a slowing Zane Smith at pit entry, spinning out and damaging the nose of his No. 45 car.
Team co-owner Michael Jordan looked on from the pits, dismayed, and Reddick was visibly frustrated after climbing from the car.
“Just sums up our year,” said Reddick. “When we have something that’s really solid, we find a way to screw it up. Me and Zane were both coming pit road hot, kind of almost at the point of no return. I realized he was really checking up big, and I saw that there was a car ahead, turning the garage. So, I’m guessing that’s where all of our trouble started. You know, we were both coming in hot, so expecting to roll down pit road, and I couldn’t tell who — oh, 34 [Todd Gilliland]. Yeah, there we go. I was looking at the replay, but that’s just what it felt like. You know, we were coming pit road hot, and he checked up, and I guess it was just cars coming in to turn into the garage … it just sucks.”
The opening to enter the garage is near the entrance to pit road, at an opening in the pit wall.
We want your opinion!
What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?
– The Motorsport.com Team