Harvick captures pole for Bojangles’ Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway

Posted on September 2, 2017September 2, 2017 by Reid Spencer

DARLINGTON, S.C. – Kevin Harvick ended Saturday’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series knockout qualifying session at Darlington Raceway with an excellent omen for Sunday night’s Bojangles’ Southern 500 (on NBCSN at 6 p.m. ET).

Covering the 1.366-mile distance in 27.669 seconds (177.730 mph) in the final round, Harvick earned his second career pole at the Lady in Black. The first time Harvick was the top qualifier at Darlington was in 2014. He went on to win the Bojangles’ Southern 500. After that he won the series championship.

Last year, Harvick started first and finished second when the field was ordered according to owner points because of a qualifying rainout.

The Coors Light Pole Award was Harvick’s fourth of the season and the 21st of his career. It also represented a benchmark of progress the Stewart-Haas Racing organization has made in its transition from Chevrolet to Ford in 2017.

“I think, obviously, we’ve had a big gap of learning since we switched to Ford,” said Harvick, who swept all three rounds of qualifying in the No. 4 SHR Ford. “A lot of things have been different. We’ve had to do a lot of things different, and the work load’s been pretty heavy.

“I’m really proud of everyone at Stewart-Haas Racing for everything that they’ve done. We just keep getting better and better. Hopefully, we can keep improving, and hopefully this is a sign of things to come on Sunday night.”

Martin Truex Jr. (177.077 mph) qualified second, earning his eighth front-row start of the season, a number that includes one pole and seven second-place efforts. Kyle Busch claimed the third starting spot, followed by Chip Ganassi Racing teammates Kyle Larson and Jamie McMurray.

“That was definitely a good qualifying session for us,” Truex said. “We were off a little bit in the first round and just kept working on the car. I kind of adjusted my driving style throughout all three rounds, and we ended up second.

“It seems like we’ve been second a lot this year, and it’s been a good number for us, and hopefully it’ll be a good one on Sunday night.”

Among drivers trying to fight their way into the playoff with race wins, Joey Logano qualified eighth, Erik Jones was 10th and Clint Bowyer was 16th. Dale Earnhardt Jr. will start 22nd in his last Darlington race in the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet.

“We didn;t make any qualifying runs (in practice), and we got something decent out of today,” Earnhardt said. “In race trim, we fell off really hard on the long run, so we’ve still got some more time to work on it. We just need to keep looking forward and see if we can get better.

“Anything can happen in this race. There’s limited sets of tires and you never know what can happen. Hopefully, we can get enough speed in our car and have the right strategy and the right tires at the right time.”

Posted on September 2, 2017September 3, 2017 by Staff Report

At a Glance

What: Bojangles’ Southern 500
Where: Darlington (S.C.) Raceway, 1.366-mile oval
Green flag: 6:15 p.m. ET
TV/Radio: NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Forecast: Sunny with a high near 87, according to the National Weather Service, with northwest winds at 5 to 7 mph.
National anthem: The Oak Ridge Boys
Grand Marshals: 2018 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductees Ray Evernham, Ron Hornaday, Ken Squier and Robert Yates
Race distance: 367 laps, 501.3 miles
Pit road speed: 45 mph
Caution car speed: 50 mph
Stage lengths: Stage 1 ends on Lap 100. Stage 2 ends on Lap 200. Final stage is scheduled to end on Lap 367

Posted on September 2, 2017 by Staff Report

DARLINGTON, S.C. — Voting for the National Motorsports Press Association’s Most Popular Driver Award will officially open Sunday, Sept. 3, 2017.

The 2017 voting period will open at 12 a.m. ET Sunday and close at 11:59 p.m. ET on Sunday, Nov. 19.

To vote for this year’s award, fans can visit www.nmpamostpopulardriver.com via desktop or the NASCAR MOBILE app.

Once again, voting is limited to one vote per person per email address per day. Fans are encouraged to share their votes through social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

Eligible drivers for this year’s award are those who have declared for the 2017 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series championship.

The award is administered by the NMPA and is the only major NASCAR award determined solely by fan vote. It has been presented annually since 1953.

Nineteen drivers have received the award at least once since the program began. NMPA Hall of Fame member and 1988 series champion Bill Elliott holds the record for most MPD awards with 16; Hendrick Motorsports driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. has won the award for the past 14 seasons. Earnhardt is stepping down from competing in NASCAR’s Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series at season’s end.

The winner of this year’s award will be announced during the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Awards program Thursday, Nov. 30 at the Wynn Las Vegas. NBCSN, MRN and SiriusXM will provide coverage of this year’s program.

Posted on September 1, 2017September 1, 2017 by Zack Albert

DARLINGTON, S.C. — Dale Earnhardt Jr. was feted again Friday at Darlington Raceway, receiving another send-off gift as he embarks on the final 12-race stretch of his career.

Sunday’s Bojangles’ Southern 500 (6 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM) will inch him another step closer to the last race in his full-time career. Though he’ll remain in the sport with spot duty in the NASCAR XFINITY Series and a new role in the NBC Sports broadcast booth, both he and his family are bracing for that farewell, scheduled Nov. 19 in the Homestead-Miami Speedway season finale.

“I’ve been thinking about it a little bit as we get closer because this will go by pretty quick, these last few races will go by pretty fast, so it’s going to be here before I know it,” Earnhardt said after Friday’s practices at the historic 1.366-mile track. “I haven’t really had any emotions yet and I know I will be sad as well. It’s hard to put so much into something and then have to stop doing it and change directions. No matter why you are retiring or having to change what you are doing. When you put so much into it, it is hard to make that change.

“And I don’t really know what I’m going to miss. If I knew what I was going to miss it would be more emotional and harder to deal with, but the fact that I’m not quite sure exactly what is going to be the most difficult part about it it’s really not set in yet.”

Darlington had a number of lasting tributes for Earnhardt and his family on Friday, the opening day of the sport’s annual NASCAR Throwback weekend. Track president Kerry Tharp presented the Hendrick Motorsports No. 88 driver with a commemorative print and a program to donate 88 tickets annually to young fans in the region to future Southern 500s.

Those proclamations came after Friday morning’s dedication of the Turn 3 suites as Earnhardt Towers, a ceremony attended by Earnhardt Jr.’s sister, Kelley Earnhardt Miller. Earnhardt Miller said plans are already in motion to celebrate her brother’s final race, bringing those eventualities into sharper focus.

“I mean, I’m going to cry a lot. I may as well pack mostly tissues in my suitcase,” Earnhardt Miller said. “I just know I’m going to cry because at most events when there’s anything that’s historical or involves my family or something coming to an end or changing, that’s just what I do. I don’t know how it’s going to be. It’s certainly going to be probably surreal in the moment.

“It’s going to be very busy because my team on the brand side for Dale are going to have our hands full for the weekend coordinating and entertaining sponsors, and so it’s probably going to be one of those things in the moment that you just work through because you’ve got a lot of things to handle and do. Then you’re going to look back on it and realize maybe that you didn’t take in some moments, so I’m probably going to have to be pretty mindful of that as I go through the weekend. But it’s going to be sad.”

His special paint scheme is already decided and other plans are in development, but Earnhardt Jr. admitted he won’t know how he’ll react to the emotions of the moment. He drew a corollary Friday to the departure of his former crew chief, Steve Letarte, at the end of the 2014 season.

“I’m not quite sure how that is going to work out,” said Earnhardt, who will be reunited with Letarte next season on the NBC Sports team. “I know that I never really thought about what that would be like until Steve ran his last race with me at Homestead and he was as cool as a cucumber all weekend, at least in front of everybody, in front of me and the guys in the hauler and everything.

“He was great all the way up until every race would lean in the car, we would shake hands, we would say a few words about ‘have a good day, I’m here with you, we are going to work together,’ all those things that you like a crew chief to say and as soon as he come in there and started talking he just fell out and started crying and bawling like a baby. And I thought, man, and I started crying, too, to be honest with you. It was a difficult moment. So, I imagine that is going to be part of it for me and it’s going to be hard to not have those emotions at that last race.”

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Reid Spencer

DARLINGTON, S.C. — Will Chase Elliott score a Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series victory in his last 12 races in the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet?

Or will William Byron be the first to do the honors when he moves into the No. 24 ride next year, with Elliott set to drive the No. 9 — a number replete with Elliott family history.

When Elliott takes the green flag in Sunday’s Bojangles’ Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway (on NBCSN at 6 p.m. ET), it will mark the 1,439th time the No. 24 has run in competition at NASCAR’s highest level. The car number, driven for the first time at Daytona in 1950 with Dick Clothier behind the wheel, has been to Victory Lane 93 times — all with four-time champion Jeff Gordon in the seat.

So if Elliott happens to win before his tenure in the No. 24 ends, he’ll be the only driver other than Gordon to take a checkered flag with that number. And with Elliott on the playoff bubble, a victory in the next two races — before the playoff field is set — would be particularly serendipitous.

“Excited for the rest of this season,” Elliott said on Friday before opening practice at Darlington. “Definitely, as I have said throughout the week, too, you know I have an opportunity to add on to the success Jeff has had in this car, and I would like to do that before I don’t have that opportunity anymore.”

When Elliott switches to the No. 9 next year, he’ll be driving the same car number that carried his father, NASCAR Hall of Famer Bill Elliott, to 38 of his 44 career victories and a series championship in 1988. Chase Elliott had no second thoughts about making the switch.

“Any time you have a chance to kind of go back to where you came from in a sense with your number … that’s a number I’ve been tied to for a long time,” Elliott said. “When you are a kid, and you go and you are going to play soccer for the first time and you pick No. 9, I feel like from there you are always going to have that connection with it, or whatever.

“So, for me, no, it was pretty easy to want to take that opportunity. The only thought I have had is the No. 24, it really has become home for me over the past year and a half and I feel like I have kind of got to that point with it and felt at home. So that’s the only thing to it, but no, it was a no-brainer for me to want to take that chance.”

And when he climbs into the No. 9 for the first time in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, Elliott will have the chance to add to another legacy — one that’s a lot more personal.

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Zack Albert

DARLINGTON, S.C. — Martin Truex Jr. says he’s bullish about the prospects of a possible “choose cone” rule in high-level NASCAR events, saying it would add another element of driver strategy.

Truex, the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series points leader, made the remarks in between Friday practices for Sunday’s Bojangles’ Southern 500 (6 p.m. ET, NBCSN, MRN, SiriusXM) at Darlington Raceway.

The rule, which has been used at some weekly tracks in the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series, is being discussed to determine double-file restart orders for NASCAR’s national divisions. The rule allows drivers to have lane choice, picking the high or low lane on either side of a cone in the middle of the track to form the restart order.

“Yes. I think it’d be a great rule,” Truex said. “I go back to Michigan 1, and we had the car to beat by quite a bit. I mean, we were so fast. We passed the leader three or four different times. We got off on pit sequence and we were like fourth or fifth, and every single restart on the last four or five restarts of the race, I think we got the bottom lane, and every time we’d lose two or three spots. It absolutely takes you out of a shot to win.

“It completely took our chance away to win there, so having the cone rule and picking the outside, we might have five wins right now, and that’s happened at a few race tracks this year.”

In that June race at Michigan, Truex led 62 laps through the first three-quarters of the 200-lap race, but faded to a sixth-place finish. Using a cone rule would mark a significant shift in the complexion of late-race restarts, but would also potentially eliminate the gamesmanship in waiting for an advantageous restart spot when exiting pit road like at Bristol.

Truex says he’s not a part of the drivers’ council that regularly meets to discuss matters concerning competition in particular and the sport in general, but that he frequently hears positive feedback from his peers.

“I think it’s a good thing,” Truex said. “I think the drivers are all in favor of it because you can kind of control your destiny a bit more, so typically when we can do that, the fans in NASCAR kind of vote the other way, so we’ll see how it goes but I would definitely be in favor of it.”

Posted on September 1, 2017 by DraftKings

Rankings below are based on a mixture of expected output and DraftKings’ NASCAR salaries for that day. The ordering is not based on highest projected fantasy totals, but rather by value of each driver.

(fppk = average fantasy points per $1,000 of salary. The typical median fppk for a 2016 race was in the threes. Plate tracks tend to be lower and short tracks tend to run higher due to the amount of laps.)

1. Martin Truex, Jr. ($10,700) – In order to emphasize his greatness at intermediate tracks, here are Truex’s scores at those tracks this season: 39, 116, 76, 61, 105, 149, 75, 127 and 100 points. The only time he scored less than 60 points was the second race of the season. (6.1 fppk)

2. Kyle Larson ($10,300) – His median finish in nine intermediate track races this season is second place. Just sit and think about that for a second. Half of the playoff races are intermediate tracks. Larson better clear space in his trophy case. (5.4 fppk)

3. Kyle Busch ($10,600) – The Bristol win will play games with your memory. Busch has been fast all summer, but he routinely makes mistakes. He’s had two clean races: Pocono and Bristol. The rest were textbook “what could have been” races littered with self-inflicted wounds. (5.5 fppk)

4. Denny Hamlin ($9,900) – Every driver is one step behind the group of Truex, Kyle Busch and Larson. Most are a few steps away, but Hamlin is just one step. If the race breaks his way and he gets into clean air, Hamlin can finish with a top-three DFS score. (4.0 fppk)

5. Jimmie Johnson ($9,100) – The only big fantasy NASCAR score from Johnson at an intermediate track came at Texas. That shouldn’t be a surprise. Johnson leads NASCAR with seven Texas wins. Johnson has three Darlington wins, but two of those were 13 years ago. (3.6 fppk)

6. Kevin Harvick ($9,700) – The track history statistic will be tested this weekend. Harvick’s past Darlington races check all of the boxes (four straight top-fives at Darlington). Those were all in a Chevy. This season SHR switched to Ford, and Harvick has just two top-fives at intermediate tracks. (4.3 fppk)

7. Joey Logano ($8,600) – There are several ways to look at Logano’s 2017 season. Compared to previous seasons, statistically, it appears that Logano has taken a step back. That perspective ignores Truex’s domination. Logano is a consistent top-10 driver; he’s just not Martin Truex, Jr. (3.0 fppk)

8. Chase Elliott ($9,300) – At Kansas and Charlotte, Elliott had two bad luck wrecks. Before those wrecks, he was a contender. In the four other 1.5-mile track races, he has three top-fives and a top-10. (3.6 fppk)

9. Jamie McMurray ($8,500) – It’s far enough into the season that we have a good idea of who McMurray is. He’s a consistent top-10 driver, but he is not leading laps or running fast laps. (3.4 fppk)

10. Erik Jones ($8,800) – His Bristol performance was impressive. Kyle Larson did not control a race until his second season (it was also at Bristol). Austin Dillon and Ricky Stenhouse still have not led the field for a significant period. Jones led for half of the race at one of the hardest tracks in NASCAR. (4.1 fppk)

11. Brad Keselowski ($9,200) – His win at Atlanta and big fantasy day at Las Vegas seem like a lifetime ago. Somehow his teammate Blaney has speed, but the rest of the Penske cars have been left behind. Look at the Michigan race. BK had the pole and ran upfront, but it was only a matter of time before Truex took over. (4.1 fppk)

12. Matt Kenseth ($9,500) – He has a JGR car, but it’s like the Kasey Kahne ride at Hendrick. Just being on the team isn’t enough. Kenseth has three top-10s at intermediate tracks in 2017. He can point in his way into the playoffs if he plays it safe. (3.6 fppk)

13. Ryan Blaney ($8,700) – The Wood Brothers have found a way to add speed to this Penske car. Blaney has been consistently faster than Keselowski and Logano at the intermediate tracks this season. He led more than 80 laps at the Texas and the Kansas 1.5-mile tracks. (2.8 fppk)

14. Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. ($7,300) – The typical track history stats for Stenhouse are either impressive or terrible, but Darlington is neither (three top-20s in four races). In the last four intermediate track races this season, Stenhouse has four top-15 finishes. (4.2 fppk)

15. Daniel Suarez ($7,800) – The fastest cars in NASCAR are the JGR Toyotas. This one is priced less than $8,000. Suarez finished seventh at Kansas and 11th at Charlotte. His 18th-place finish at Kentucky seems like a step backward, but his average running position was 12th. (4.0 fppk)

16. Ty Dillon ($6,800) – Every week he figures it out. He never shows anything during practice, but by the end of the race, he’s right there in 20th. He may not be in the fantasy NASCAR lineup that takes the top spot, but he’s usually in a lot of lineups that win. (4.5 fppk)

17. Clint Bowyer ($8,400) – Bowyer doesn’t have the speed to run out front all race. He has to get cute with pit stop strategy. The fuel mileage game can mean first or 25th. (3.8 fppk)

18. Ryan Newman ($8,100) – He has four top-10 finishes in his last six Darlington races. He finished 13th and 23rd in the other two races. Newman is always safe, but he seems unusually safe at a track that has a lot of intimidating nicknames. (4.2 fppk)

19. Kurt Busch ($8,200) – Since his win at Daytona, Kurt has just been turning laps. Sometimes you forget that he’s still a Cup driver. His average finish at intermediate tracks this season is 17th, but that number is saddled by a couple of bad races. He usually runs around 10th to 15th. (3.1 fppk)

20. Matt DiBenedetto ($5,700) – Darlington is a messy race. This is a week where fantasy NASCAR players will punt (pick a low-priced driver in order to roster several expensive drivers). DiBenedetto has a knack for not wrecking at volatile race tracks. (3.7 fppk)

I am a promoter at DraftKings and am also an avid fan and user (my username is greenflagradio2) and may sometimes play on my personal account in the games that I offer advice on. Although I have expressed my personal view on the games and strategies above, they do not necessarily reflect the view(s) of DraftKings and I may also deploy different players and strategies than what I recommend above.

Posted on September 1, 2017September 1, 2017 by Nascar

MORE: Clements excited to race at home track

DARLINGTON, S.C. — It’s throwback weekend for NASCAR and Darlington Raceway, so it was fitting the first driver in the media center on Friday was Jeremy Clements.

Last week’s winner at Road America, Clements and his Spartanburg, South Carolina-based, family-owned Chevrolet team epitomize the term “throwback.”

Theirs is an effort that harkens back to the day when teams didn’t fly in race-day pit crews, you simply hired locals to help prepare, push and pit the car. You got friends who can be here this weekend? Great, we can get ‘em in if you can get ‘em here.

Back to a day when you didn’t have a new car for every track. Instead, you ran the same car as often as necessary. You ran the same engine as often as necessary. You ran the same tires … well, you get the idea.

To call the team small is to do small teams an injustice. Clements’ team is minuscule, run by Jeremy, his dad Tony, his uncle Glen and enough others to count on one hand. With fingers left over.

MORE: Drivers off congratulations on victory

Clements, 32, is a former Late Model racer who is “former” only in the sense of he’s not racing Late Models when he’s racing in the XFINITY Series. He’s won his share of races on dirt through the years.

But it took him 256 races to find Victory Lane in NASCAR. The better part of a dozen years. Not that he’s counting.

His victory in last week’s Johnsonville 180 at Road America has been called an upset. It’s been called a shocker. Even Clements said he was somewhat surprised by the outcome, even though road courses, he said, “are a little bit better for a driver and team like me with a low budget.”

NASCAR UPSETS: Biggest ever | Vote on Clements’ ranking

Money earned from the victory won’t go toward the purchase of new vehicles. Clements said he’s never driven a new car in the XFINITY Series and he’s been racing there, off and on, since 2003. “Nope,” he said, “no new car for me ever.”

Last week’s “throwback car” was an ’08 model, and will be run again. The engine has multiple races on it and will see more track time. Knowing that, he said he was particularly careful during his post-race celebratory burnout.

“Everything we buy is used,” he said. “Used parts, used cars. That’s just how we can get by. … That’s why it’s unbelievable to me … when I came up on the pack of guys that I passed for the lead at first, before I pitted, the 22, the 42, the 62, really strong cars, I was like ‘how am I so much faster than these guys? I don’t get it.’ And it was just unreal to me because it shouldn’t be that way.”

Nearly a week after the fact and it sounds almost as if he’s apologizing for the victory.

Other teams are better funded. Some enjoy affiliations with Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series teams. Used cars and used parts and patchwork crews, and still he’s competitive from time to time. And now Clements is a winner, playoff bound for the first time.

Days like last Sunday make it all worthwhile.

“Heck yeah man,” Clements said. “People are like, ‘Why do you keep doing this over the years?’

“We’re not terrible; we run respectable a lot of times. … I always knew we could do it, given the right opportunity, the right day, everything works out. We were able to prove some of those critics wrong. That’s why we do it.

“Obviously I raced in XFINITY, I won a lot of dirt races, a lot of stuff leading up to this. But you have to remember I drive for my family team … but that’s life. It’s not like I’ve been driving for Joe Gibbs Racing for 255 starts.

“I’m blessed that I get to do this and I want to keep it going as long as I can.”

Posted on September 1, 2017September 1, 2017 by Staff Report

A look at the drivers that ran 10 consecutive laps during Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice at Darlington Raceway.

RELATED: Practice 2 results

Pos	Car	Driver	From Lap	To Lap	Avg Speed
1	42	Kyle Larson	20	29	168.923
2	21	Ryan Blaney	1	10	168.246
3	41	Kurt Busch	5	14	167.912
4	2	Brad Keselowski	19	28	167.889
5	11	Denny Hamlin	21	30	167.785
6	24	Chase Elliott	1	10	167.259
7	31	Ryan Newman	1	10	167.069
8	1	Jamie McMurray	1	10	167.034
9	14	Clint Bowyer	22	31	167.025
10	4	Kevin Harvick	1	10	166.970
11	88	Dale Earnhardt Jr.	1	10	166.846
12	18	Kyle Busch	1	10	166.787
13	48	Jimmie Johnson	1	10	166.724
14	20	Matt Kenseth	3	12	166.491
15	22	Joey Logano	40	49	166.012
16	38	David Ragan	21	30	165.713
17	19	Daniel Suarez #	3	12	165.661
18	3	Austin Dillon	1	10	165.457
19	27	Paul Menard	1	10	165.115
20	10	Danica Patrick	19	28	165.067
21	13	Ty Dillon #	29	38	164.982
22	95	Michael McDowell	1	10	164.750
23	43	Aric Almirola	16	25	164.499
24	77	Erik Jones #	10	19	164.497
25	34	Landon Cassill	1	10	163.227
26	72	Cole Whitt	29	38	161.098

* Car must run 10 consecutive laps on the track to be included in the above chart.

A look at the drivers that ran 10 consecutive laps during Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice at Darlington Raceway.

RELATED: Practice 1 results

Pos	Car	Driver	From Lap	To Lap	Avg Speed
1	11	Denny Hamlin	1	10	169.098
2	42	Kyle Larson	1	10	168.251
3	41	Kurt Busch	37	46	167.638
4	18	Kyle Busch	21	30	167.029
5	14	Clint Bowyer	35	44	166.509
6	78	Martin Truex Jr.	27	36	166.141
7	20	Matt Kenseth	22	31	166.057
8	19	Daniel Suarez #	24	33	166.032
9	21	Ryan Blaney	23	32	166.025
10	2	Brad Keselowski	30	39	165.661
11	1	Jamie McMurray	6	15	165.546
12	10	Danica Patrick	26	35	165.361
13	4	Kevin Harvick	25	34	165.109
14	5	Kasey Kahne	30	39	165.104
15	24	Chase Elliott	6	15	164.710
16	6	Trevor Bayne	19	28	164.379
17	13	Ty Dillon #	30	39	163.869
18	27	Paul Menard	30	39	162.970
19	32	Matt DiBenedetto	27	36	162.512
20	51	*Cody Ware	11	20	152.474

* Car must run 10 consecutive laps on the track to be included in the above chart.
*Required to qualify on time, (i) Ineligible for driver points in this series

Posted on September 1, 2017June 21, 2021 by Staff Report

RELATED: Full results

Propelling his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota at 173.320 mph, Kyle Busch put his No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota atop the speed charts in Friday’s final Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice at Darlington Raceway despite an earlier spin.

Busch slid his No. 18 Toyota up the track to avoid trouble 30 minutes into the session and appeared to avoid hitting the wall. He returned to the track to post the fastest speed.

Kevin Harvick came up second in the 85-minute session, his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford recording a speed of 173.070 mph. Jamie McMurray entered the top five for the first time this afternoon, his No. 1 Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet notching the third-fastest speed (172.990 mph). Martin Truex Jr.’s No. 78 Furniture Row Racing Toyota (172.729 mph) and Denny Hamlin’s No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota (172.632 mph) completed the top five.

Trevor Bayne earned a Darlington stripe late in the session after his No. 6 Roush Fenway Racing Ford became loose in Turn 3 and hit the wall, resulting in significant damage. The team will attempt to repair the damage.

The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series is back on track Saturday at 1:45 p.m. ET for Coors Light Pole Qualifying (NBCSN).

RELATED: Practice 1 results | Best 10-lap times

Kyle Larson’s Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet topped the leaderboard in the waning minutes of Friday’s opening Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice at Darlington Raceway. The No. 42 driver notched a fast lap of 173.064 mph.

Denny Hamlin was second-fastest in the field, his No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota peaking at 172.644 mph.

Team Penske’s Brad Keselowski ranked third with a top speed of 172.584 mph in his No. 2 Ford, while Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s No. 17 Roush Fenway Racing Ford recorded the fourth-fastest speed (171.896 mph). Kevin Harvick, rounded out the top five with a fast lap of 171.890 mph in his No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford.

Reigning race winner and current series points leader Martin Truex Jr. was 18th-quickest in the opening session.

Corey LaJoie’s No. 23 BK Racing Toyota earned its first Darlington stripe this weekend, as LaJoie brushed the wall early in the 85-minute session.

Reed Sorenson (No. 15 Premium Motorsports Toyota), LaJoie and Michael McDowell (No. 95 Leavine Family Racing Chevrolet) served 15-minute practice holds for being late to qualifying inspection at Bristol Motor Speedway.

For final practice, Erik Jones (No. 77 Furniture Row Racing Toyota) will have a 15-minute practice hold for failing pre-race inspection twice at Bristol. David Ragan (No. 38 Front Row Motorsports Ford) will have a 30-minute practice hold for failing pre-race inspection three times at Bristol.