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| Jimmie Johnson had a solid first two practice sessions at Indy. |
It's not quite the drastic change we saw with Kentucky's aero-package compared to the other 1.5-mile tracks, but it's certainly not the same as Pocono's set-up from last month, which I expected them to run similar to.
The top teams all look good, but we saw some teams like Michael Waltrip Racing’s duo of Clint Bowyer and David Ragan really get some things figured out in the second session while others such as Kyle Busch were having fits in radio conversations with his crew about how bad his car was.
Denny Hamlin was fastest in the early cooler session at 182.208 mph followed by the two favorites to win Sunday, Kevin Harvick (181.796) and Jimmie Johnson (181.756).
In the second session, Dale Earnhardt Jr. posted a top speed at 181.466 mph on his first of 13 laps run while Brad Keselowski just missed topping the charts (181.448) on the final of his 16 laps.
There was such a wild mix of drivers running in race trim and mock-qualifying trim at the same time like we haven’t seen all season. Kyle Busch’s 33 laps in the second session was the most while Jeff Gordon only ran five laps.
Only three drivers ran 10-consecutive laps in the second session led by Kyle Larson, who was also the only driver to run as many in a row during the early session.
There were a couple of incidents on the track with Paul Menard smacking the wall in the first session and Hamlin's hood flying open and slamming his windshield in the second session. Neither will go to back-up cars, but Hamlin used the hood from his back-up to replace the damaged one.
The final practice session will be Friday at 4:00 pm ET where all the teams will have 115-minutes to sort out their best set-ups. Qualifying is scheduled for Saturday at 1:10 pm ET.
Practice 1 Speeds
Practice 2 Speeds
Jamie McMurray on the new spoiler
“Well, I think it’s really hard to give you an answer to that because we haven’t had a restart first off. And to me the restart is where this package is going to play a bigger role than in practice. The thing with practice is that as you start to catch the car in front of you, typically their car is not very good. So, when you see somebody catching you fairly quick you pull in so you can work on it and get your car better. I really haven’t been within 10 car lengths of anyone in front of me. The closest I was to anyone was behind (Greg) Biffle at the very start of practice. He pulled off the racetrack when I got within about 10 car lengths of him. I really don’t know. I haven’t gotten to feel the…you know they said like 100 and some horsepower drag advantage to the car in back. I haven’t been close enough to feel that yet. I honestly think until we get into the race on Sunday that it’s hard to get anyone’s true opinion on what we are going to have. To me on Sunday when you get two cars side-by-side with this package the guy in third is going to have an extra engine. It’s going to be crazy the amount of speed that he is going to have. I don’t know, the restarts are going to be pretty wild, I think.”
Aric Almirola on the new spoiler
Q: WHAT DID YOU THINK WITH THIS NEW HIGH DRAG PACKAGE YESTERDAY?
Aric Almirola on the new spoiler
Q: WHAT DID YOU THINK WITH THIS NEW HIGH DRAG PACKAGE YESTERDAY?
“I thought we had more drag. We were going slower down the straightaway, which meant we were on throttle more in the corners. I think it’ll be interesting to see how the race plays out on Sunday. Anytime you go and drive your car by yourself you can kind of get the balance close and you can get an idea for what your car is going to drive like, but when the green flag drops for the race is when we’ll really be able to tell if it’s an improvement for the racing or not.”
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