DFS NASCAR: Folds of Honor 500 Practice Notes

Final Practice at Folds of Honor 500

Saturday, February 24

80 minutes in length

Top-20 Speeds (one lap)

Best 10-lap Averages

Penalized Drivers

• Martin Truex Jr. – 30 minutes at end of practice
• Jeffrey Earnhardt – 15 minutes at end of practice
• Cole Whitt – 15 minutes at end of practice
• Jimmie Johnson – 15 minutes at end of practice
• Gray Gaulding – 15 minutes at end of practice
• Harrison Rhodes – 15 minutes at end of practice
• Michael McDowell – 15 minutes at end of practice

Items of Note:

• Martin Truex Jr. failed pre-qualifying inspection three times on Friday and lost his car chief for the race and was penalized 30 minutes in Saturday’s practice session.
• Goodyear expects the pace (speeds) to fall off 3 seconds of a green lap run during the race.
• Darrell Wallace Jr.’s crew chief says the car needs more ability to turn in the corners but without hurting the speed, which he admits will be hard to do.
• William Byron and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. bumped bumpers five minutes into practice heading to the start/finish line.
• Ryan Newman will start P2 on Sunday, the 12^th time on the front row at Atlanta including seven poles. He leads practice with 73 minutes left.
• Paul Menard’s splitter is dragging on the track with 72 minutes left and nearly slid out in Turn 4 with a very loose car.
• Gray Gaulding was having his car wrapped with a sponsors wrap during practice with 68 minutes to go in the session. They are hoping to get the car on the track later in the session. (He got on the track with 37 minutes left in practice).
• Paul Menard ran 21 laps which is about a half a fuel run and their lap times fell off 3.5 seconds because of tire wear.
• Kyle Larson was working on running the low groove, right on the yellow line, instead of the high line near the wall.
• Aric Almirola snapped sideways coming out of Turn 4 and headed to the pits afterward to tighten the car some.
• AJ Allmendinger was running the high line in Turns 1&2 right up against the wall but then hooked the yellow line in Turns 3&4 early in the session.
• A lot of drivers are practicing pit stop runs and getting down to pit road speeds. Drivers do 190 in Turn 3 but have to slow down to 45 for pit lane (they can go 49.99 mph without a penalty).
• All of the Hendrick cars have been super loose this weekend and with 55 minutes left in practice all four were in the garage area getting tightened up
• Jeff Gordon said on restarts there or four lanes to drive on but after tires wear down the only lanes to use are the very top or very bottom. Darrell Waltrip said once the tires wear down the turns get iffy if you have three-wide.
• Kevin Harvick mentioned that the wind on Saturday is harder to deal with than it was on Friday but he loves his car this week and says it’s already dialed in and that he’s confident going into the race.
• Kyle Busch won the pole on Friday and then won the Truck pole on Saturday morning but is running P15 with 45 minutes left in practice and he’s the fourth-fastest Toyota on the board.
• Darrell Wallace Jr. says he thinks his car is okay but it’s hard to tell where he stands because some went out on stickers and some went out on scuffs. He sits 10^th this session but it’s about the average lap times.
• Martin Truex Jr. is on his third run of practice with 38 minutes to go. He ran 9 laps on the first one and 12 on the second one. He has the best consecutive five list but will only have 8 minutes left to run.
• Drivers run multi-zone right side tires that have two different compounds on the tire in order to give more grip and have durability. The inner 2” of the tire are for durability to keep it from wearing down and the outer 10” is a softer compound to improve grip around the rougher track.
• At Daytona there were only 12 four-tire stops in the 17-second range everything else was slower than that making pit stops volatile at Atlanta.
• Kyle Larson ran a 29-lap with a few at the top lane but said it was very worn out. The top lane did provide speed. He has six second-place finishes on 1.5-mile track but has yet to win on a track of that distance.
• Ricky Stenhouse Jr. made a big setup change on his last run and ran 38 laps but he didn’t like the package that they ran last year. They are switching it back to the original package from the start of the weekend to make a final run.
• Harrison Rhodes didn’t run the first practice but is running the second practice, he also didn’t run qualifying in the 51-car.
• The top-10 best laps didn’t change since the first runs of practice and the first couple laps of those runs due to tire change.
• Denny Hamlin said his car is decent but it is tight and pushy on corner entry and he’s run the highest line of anyone at practice to this point with 15 minutes to go. They are still working on the car but it has improved each run out to get the balance right in each lane of the track.
• Only one driver, Ryan Newman, ran a sub-30 second lap in the final practice session.
• Clint Bowyer had the best 15-lap average in Saturday’s session and he feels good about his car. He has been top-10 in both practices and in qualifying. Ran long runs on both sticker and scuffed tires.
• Brad Keselowski says he doesn’t nowhere they stand with everybody quite yet but they are continuing to work on the car a bit even before the race on Sunday.

Practice 1 at Folds of Honor 500

Friday, February 23

80 minutes in length

Top-20 Speeds (One Lap)

Best 10-Lap Average

Items of Note:

• Martin Truex Jr. and Austin Dillon made one lap qualifying runs in qualifying trim and stood at 22 and 23 in the one lap speeds
• Alex Bowman made a second run with 50 minutes left in practice but said his first practice run the car was free and wasn’t landing well coming out of the turns
• Jimmie Johnson ran race lines with 45 minutes left in practice but only ran a few in race trim before coming in to set it in qualifying trim and saving the tires for the race.
• With 40 minutes left in practice, four drivers had posted single laps of sub-30 second runs.
• Clint Bowyer felt good about his car when interviewed with 38 minutes left in practice. He had run P6 at that point with a 30.054 seconds.
• Pit road at Atlanta is one of the hardest to get onto on the schedule because of the transition from high banking to flat concrete. There were 13 pit road speeding penalties last year. But just 1 happened in 2016 because of the difference in pit road timing going from 9 segments in 2016 to 16 in 2017 and again in 2018.
• A lot of drivers with 30 minutes to go were in the garage making the switch to qualifying trim from race trim
• Richard Childress (owner of RCR) indicated that a lot of cars were getting loose coming out of turn 2 while talking on the radio to Austin Dillon.
• David Ragan is starting his 400^th start in MENCS at his home track of Atlanta (he’s from Unadilla GA). Ragan shook the car down in race trim in a few laps and found some issues with the car to work out. With 25 minutes left in practice he is switching to qualifying trim to make a mock qualifying lap for Friday night qualifying.
• Getting to the bottom (yellow line) on 1&2 is a challenge for most cars while running multiple grooves in 3&4 is easy to do.
• Kyle Larson is putting down multiple fast laps on second and third qualifying runs on tires. He was rough exiting turn 2 through the center and went on too high of a line.
• The last 20 minutes were dominated by mock qualifying runs
• Erik Jones was the fastest Toyota on the board with 17 minutes left in practice running P16.
• Chevrolet had the top-five spots in first practice with 17 minutes left in the session.
• Ryan Blaney got very loose in turn 1 as the back of the car stepped out and he nearly hit the wall on the high line through the corner with 13 minutes left in practice.
• 35 of 36 cars made at least one lap with 12 minutes to go in the first session
• Joey Logano is P9 with 6 minutes left after running a very fast and smooth mock qualifying run.
• Brad Keselowski ran his fastest lap of the session with 5 minutes go in the session but stayed in P22.
•  Chase Elliott ran his fastest lap with 4:30 to go in the session but stayed at P27. He got very loose coming out of turn 4 and ran near the wall. It’s a big race for him being his home track and his sponsor is based in Atlanta.
• Ricky Stenhouse Jr. took over the top spot with a very fast qualifying run giving the Fords three cars in the top 10. His first pole of his career came at Atlanta.
• Denny Hamlin says his car is getting to where it needs to be and he ran a lot of laps in the race trim. Wanted to wait until the track got rubbered up to really take the car for a spin on the track. He has an average finish of P4 over the last seven 1.5-mile tracks.