Earnhardt Jr. leads both Saturday practices

Conditions for Coca-Cola 600 should be much different than practice

CONCORD, N.C. -- For what it's worth, Dale Earnhardt, Jr. paced a pair of practice sessions Saturday morning at Lowe's Motor Speedway, run in preparation for Sunday evening's Coca-Cola 600.

The practices are largely considered tedious, due to the drastic difference in track conditions between morning -- when the track is hot and the sun is beating down on the surface -- and night, when the track is cooler. Still, most teams turned more than 20 laps in both sessions.

ALSO  •  Lineup  •  Happy Hour Speeds  •  2nd Practice Speeds

Earnhardt's 29.992-second lap during Happy Hour was one-tenth of a second quicker than teammate John Andretti's circuit, which placed him second on the speed chart in the weekend's final practice.

Sunday's race marks Andretti's first start since the season's second race in Rockingham, N.C. He'll start 25th Sunday.

Kevin Harvick was third-quickest overall in Happy Hour, improving from seventh in the morning, followed by Ryan Newman and Brian Vickers in the top-five.

Dave Blaney continues to impress in the No. 23 Dodge, posting the eighth-fastest Happy Hour speed to fall just short of sixth-place Joe Nemechek and seventh-best Jeremy Mayfield. Tony Stewart fell from third in the morning to ninth in Happy Hour, while Kyle Busch improved from 32nd to 10th.

Pole-sitter Jimmie Johnson was 12th fastest in Happy Hour, after falling just three-hundredths of a second short of Earnhardt's quick lap in the morning. Junior's 29.556-second circuit in the morning practice was the day's fastest.

Rookie Brendan Gaughan backed up Thursday's seventh-place qualifying effort with the fourth-fastest practice speed Saturday morning, but suffered a setback just two laps into Happy Hour when he got loose in Turn 4 and backed the Kodak Dodge into the outside wall.

"I had sticker tires on and we had one more thing we wanted to work on with the primary car," Gaughan said. "I just overdrove it with the stickers. I was trying to push, but we've got cars now. When you push things you break sometimes."

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Though he won't be driving the machine he'd hoped to, Gaughan is confident his backup is capable, and may even be better.

"This is a good race car," said Gaughan, who completed 14 laps with the backup. "We tested it at Kentucky, raced it at Darlington and it's been to the wind tunnel, so we know it's got a good body. It was the one we wanted, but we went out there and did 30.40 in the heat of the day.

"It actually feels like it might be a little better. It's not as tight as the other one. It's got a little bit of looseness, which at night should go away a little. We may actually be with a better Dodge now."

Gaughan ended up 29th overall during Happy Hour. Elliott Sadler and Terry Labonte chose not to participate in Happy Hour. Sadler was 17th in the morning practice, Labonte 11th.