BRISTOL, Tenn.: Picking up where he left off last weekend at Atlanta (Ga.) Motor Speedway, Team Penske’s Ryan Blaney led the final NASCAR Cup Series practice on Friday afternoon ahead of Sunday’s Food City Dirt Race from the famed Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway.
Blaney hustled a lap early in practice circling his No. 12 Menards Ford Mustang to a lap of 20.172 seconds at 89.233 miles per hour, just 0.22 seconds ahead of Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman.
“It’s rough, slick, really rough actually,” said Blaney of the track conditions. “The track is kind of coming up and just crazy big divots. It’s definitely not smooth. It’s rough, but you just run through things that you think will work and there wasn’t really much lane changing going on.
“(Kyle) Larson and (Tyler) Reddick could kind of run the top for a little while and then it kind of went away after a handful of minutes, but just seeing how straight and smooth you can be and trying to keep tires on it. We’re seeing a lot of tires getting corded pretty quickly, especially right-rears, even right-fronts started to go pretty quick, so that’s something that’s gonna come into play is saving your tires when the track is probably gonna be like this come race time.”
Denny Hamlin was third followed by Team Penske teammate Joey Logano and Stewart-Haas Racing rookie Chase Briscoe to comprise the top-five.
Martin Truex Jr. was sixth followed by Chase Elliott, Daytona 500 winner Michael McDowell, William Byron and Kyle Busch to complete the top-10.
Notables inside the top-20 included: Daniel Suarez (11th), Christopher Bell (12th), Matt DiBenedetto (13th), Kyle Larson (15th), Ryan Preece (17th), Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (19th) and Cole Custer (20th).
It was a rough practice session for Larson, who despite showing speed in both Cup practice sessions on Friday, will have to start at the rear of the field on Sunday after his Hendrick Motorsports team elected to change engines after Larson reported an uptick in temperature on his No. 5 Freightliner Chevrolet.
Chris Windom was the quickest of the non-fulltime NASCAR dirt experts in final practice. He placed 28th in his No. 15 NOS Energy Chevrolet for Rick Ware Racing. Stewart Friesen who will make his Cup debut on Sunday was 30th.
Mike Marlar for MBM Motorsports was 35th followed by Live Fast Motorsports’ Shane Golobic who was last in 38th.
Heat races will determine the starting lineup for Sunday afternoon’s 250-lap event beginning at 6:00 p.m. EST Saturday, Mar. 27 on FOX Sports 1.
39 Cup cars entered the inaugural event and with a 40-car maximum field, no one will fail to qualify.
Follow Chris Knight on Twitter @Knighter01.[table=3593]
(i) Ineligible for Driver Points in This Series
# Denotes Rookie
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(i) Ineligible for Driver Points in This Series
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