In a session shortened by rain, defending Daytona 500 winner William Byron topped the leaderboard in Friday evening’s NASCAR Cup Series practice at Daytona International Speedway. The driver of the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet set a quick time at 194.923 mph.
Chase Elliott (194.763 mph), Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (194.678 mph), Kyle Busch (194.392 mph) and Austin Dillon (194.032 mph) rounded out the top five. All five Chevy drivers worked together in the draft.
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Zane Smith (193.665 mph), Todd Gilliland (193.394 mph), Joey Logano (193.278 mph), Kyle Larson (193.245 mph) and Ryan Blaney (193.236 mph) completed the top 10.
During this practice session, teams and drivers had mixed agendas with some focusing on seeing how their cars handled in the draft, while others got important track time with backup cars or repaired cars from damage suffered in Thursday night’s Duel races.
Only 30 drivers set a lap time before weather halted the session prematurely with less than 20 minutes to go. Out of the eight drivers switching to backup cars following the Duels, Brad Keselowski, Justin Haley, Shane van Gisbergen and Daniel Suárez did not set a practice time on Friday.
Hélio Castroneves also joined Trackhouse Racing teammates van Gisbergen and Suárez in the garage during this session as his No. 91 team focused on repairing his primary car. Luckily, these teams will get one more shot to shake their cars down before Sunday.
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The Cup Series will be back on track Saturday for the third and final Daytona 500 practice session at 3:05 p.m. ET (FS2, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).