NASCAR DFS: Food City 500 Practice Notes

Final Practice For Food City 500

Bristol Motor Speedway

Saturday, April 6 11:05 am ET

50 minutes in length

Weather

Air Temp 59 degrees I Track Temp 74 degrees I Sunny skies

Penalized Drivers

These drivers were penalized 15 minutes at the end of practice for varying reasons:

Cassill

Wallace

Preece

Currey

Hill

Gaulding

Top-20 Speeds (single laps)

Best Lap Averages

Items of Note:

• A lot of the drivers are very curious to see how sticker tires react to long runs on the track since it’s a new left side tire compound.
• Kyle Larson was frustrated with his car in the first Saturday practice with his handling and balance and speed and he wanted to work the bottom the whole practice but went high out of frustration with the car.
• Kyle Busch said both ends of the track are working differently with the traction compound and they will work on both lines during this final practice since the later race runs will be done up top in all likelihood.
• Chase Elliott brushed the walled early in the practice and flared the right rear fender in coming off of Turn 4. They will be able to fix that without issue. He had just been getting up to speed when that happened as well.
• 24 cars are on track in the first five minutes of this session.
• Alex Bowman ran a few laps but was loose in the corners and brought it back to the pits for adjustments after making wholesale changes during the first Saturday session and logging just one lap.
• The weather in this session is pretty close to how it will be for the start of the race tomorrow.
• There are a lot of cars that are sliding around in the turns even with the downforce and the big spoiler on the back.
• Brad Keselowski is much better this session than he was in the morning session but is still searching for something in the car overall.
• Chase Elliott was back on the track with 32 minutes left in the session after the damage was fixed on the right-side fender.
• Alex Bowman is free in and loose, center off in the corners meaning they still have plenty of work to do on the car after the morning changes they made.
• With 30 minutes left in the session, there have been six cars that ran sub-15-second laps in single lap runs.
• Ryan Blaney is hugging the bottom of the track halfway through practice and is sitting eighth on the speed charts and is making a series of several lap runs as they try and tweak some different things. He’s led 195 laps this year (third most on the season) but has three top-fives and four finishes outside the top-20.
• Kurt Busch is still struggling to find the speed he wants and he said on a scale from 1-5 he said he is 5 loose and just doesn’t feel good with it. He has been in the pits several times to get adjustments.
• There are more and more cars migrating to the top of the track.
• Currently, with 15 minutes left in the session, the top groove is .2 to .3 seconds slower than the bottom groove but that is to be expected at this point in the weekend.
• In 3 & 4 the top grooves are better than they are in 1 & 2 at this point.
• Jimmie Johnson ran his fastest lap of the session with 14 minutes left on his 70^th lap of the practice.
• Ricky Stenhouse Jr. feels like he is dragging the left front and chattering the right rear which might be a tough thing to fix to get both right. He also said something funny is happening with steering in the car.
• Goodyear is noticing a lot of wear on the left side tires that are coming off the cars in this session. They are the new tires for this race and were supposed to wear less.
• Ryan Preece had smoke coming out of the left rear of the car with nine minutes left in practice but it’s still unclear exactly what the issue is. Preece believes it was a tire going down and the smoke was from a rub.
• Ryan Blaney had a moment in Turns 1 & 2 where he got loose in the top groove where the grip runs out.
• With two minutes left in the session the top groove lap times are starting to match the bottom groove lap times.
• Kevin Harvick is leading most of the consecutive laps categories in this session at 10, 20, and 30 laps.
• There were seven drivers that ran 100-plus laps in this practice session which is unusually high.

Through Final Practice

There was an issue reporting the 10-lap averages for the final practice on NASCAR's end for some reason so they aren't present in the table.

Second Practice For Food City 500

Bristol Motor Speedway

Saturday, April 6 8:00 am ET

50 minutes in length

Weather

Air Temp 51 degrees I Track Temp 55 degrees I Very little breeze

Penalized Drivers

No drivers had to serve a penalty this session

Top-20 Speeds (single-lap)

Best Lap Averages

Items of Note:

• This practice won’t really tell anyone about the race will be like because the weather is so different.
• Kurt Busch said he got loose in the traction compound during qualifying and that’s why he’s starting P27 for the race on Sunday. He also said on the radio that they have work to do on the car at practice this week.
• Jimmie Johnson is very curious as to what the traction compound is doing this session and what the texture of it is and how high up the track it goes.
• Kyle Busch got loose in Turn 3 again with 43 minutes left in the session and that was after he charged the corner like everyone else has been doing.
• Denny Hamlin said he’s been good so far with 42 minutes left but there are some bumps in Turns 1 & 2 that he wants to get the car to clear better. After making adjustments he shot straight to the top of the chart for a second run at 14.77.
• William Byron says his car is just too tight and he got really loose going up the track in Turns 1 & 2.
• Alex Bowman is undergoing wholesale changes on the 88-car and they may not be ready for this practice session since the garage area didn’t open till 7 am et Saturday morning (1.5 hours before practice).
• Chase Elliott is fighting a bit of a loose car and when he got to the back of Aric Almirola’s car the backend stepped out on him.
• Ryan Blaney says the main groove is at the bottom of the track right now but during the later session, the groove should move as the cars go for long runs. He said his is good right now but he hopes it can race on the top groove later as well.
• Clint Bowyer ran a 36-lap run ending with about 30 minutes left in the session and his 35^th lap was 15.08. That pace is incredibly fast and so drivers will have to deal with mental and physical fatigue.
• Halfway through practice, three JGR cars are in the top-4 on the speed charts and all four are in the top-8.
• There was a brief red flag when some sealer in one of the seams of the track came loose and a NASCAR official came out and pulled out the rest of the sealer from that seam.
• Daniel Suarez was not pleased with the car he had yesterday at all and they made wholesale changes and with 14 minutes left on the clack he is third on the speed charts.
• Kurt Busch says his car feels better up front in corner entry and seems to turn better but his backend tends to step out more than it did before so they are still working on the balance of the car.
• It appears that getting passed cars without a draft will be very tricky during the race. Two cars were racing in the last 10 minutes of the session and when one get to within five car lengths of the other, they simply couldn’t get any closer because of the hole in the air punched by the large spoiler.
• Kyle Larson is giving up speed this session to get the top groove to come in and he’s run 72 laps this session with most of them up there.
• Clint Bowyer says the track got tighter on the bottom even throughout this practice let alone in the later practice or the race. He did have the best 20 and 30 consecutive lap runs in this practice.
• William Byron ran 109 laps in this practice session
• Alex Bowman did manage to run one lap in the session after all of the changes were made.
• Kyle Larson nearly got into the wall in the last minute of the session.

First Practice For Food City 500

Bristol Motor Speedway

Friday, April 5 1:35 pm ET

50 minutes in length

Weather

Sunny with slight overcast skies. Air temp in the low-60s.

Penalized Drivers

No drivers were penalized in this session.

Top-20 Speeds (single lap)

Best Lap Averages

No drivers ran 10-consecutive laps in this session

Items of Note:

• Most drivers are doing just a few laps at a time in a run as they are in qualifying trim for this session.
• Some rookies like Matt Tifft and Ryan Preece have run a ton of laps early in the session to get a feel of the Cup cars on the track and where to brake.
• With 10 minutes elapsed in practice, only three cars have gone out and run actual laps on the track as they are waiting for the PJ1 traction compound to warm up and make the bottom groove drivable.
• Quin Houff had smoke come out the back of his car with 17 minutes elapsed in the session and brought out the caution for fluid on the track.
• 18 cars total have gone out and driven around the apron of the track to warm up the tires and scuff them. Only six have taken measurable times on the racing surface.
• Of the last 10 short track races run in the Cup series, Kyle Busch has won half of them.
• Ricky Stenhouse Jr. has the best average finish of any active driver in the NASCAR Cup Series at Bristol with six top-fives in the 12 career races he’s run at the track.
• Joey Logano went to the top of the speed charts with 23 minutes elapsed in the session.
• Ryan Blaney topped Logano for the top spot with 27 minutes gone in the practice.
• They are running the 750 hp high-downforce package this week with a slightly stiffer tire on the left side of the car which should handle the increased force loads better.
• Jimmie Johnson got a little loose in Turns 1 & 2 on a mock qualifying lap as he tried to get into and out of the PJ1 traction compound.
• Most of the drivers are driving just above the traction compound so far in this session as it doesn’t yet have the heat needed to really be active and sticky.
• Several cars have been snap-loose in the straights coming off the bottom groove of the turns.
• Brad Keselowski has a car that looks a bit twitchy on the track after a couple of different runs on the track.
• Kevin Harvick has turned the most laps in this session with 28 laps run in this pre-qualifying session meaning they are working quite a bit on the 4-car.
• Erik Jones has one of the best average finishes in the field in his four career Cup races at the track and ran P3 in this session after 19 laps.
• Kyle Larson jumped to the P4 spot after running the highest line run in practice late in the session.