DFS NASCAR: Pennzoil 400 Practice Notes

Final Practice for Pennzoil 400

Las Vegas Motor Speedway

Saturday, March 2 2:20 pm ET

70 minutes in length

Weather

Gusty Winds temps in the 60s and a clean track

Penalized Drivers

No drivers were penalized in this session

Top-20 Single-Lap Speeds

Best Lap Averages

Items of Note:

• The morning practice was cancelled due to rain so the final practice was extended
• Early in the session cars were able to drive all over the track in whatever groove they wanted to
• With 50 minutes left in practice, the two RCR cars were again the fastest laps on the track ahead of four Fords
• Kevin Harvick went out and made one lap and headed to the garage saying that his car is bouncing all over like it was on Friday.
• The wind is being a cross-wind in the corners and making it tougher for cars to turn as tightly as they want
• Joey Logano said that this package is more affected by the wind than previous packages and therefore could be a factor in the race.
• Martin Truex Jr. had some handling issues driving behind Chase Elliott with 42 minutes left in the session and took it straight to the garage.
• With 40 minutes left in the session the fastest 20 cars were separated by just a half of a second
• The handling of the cars at speed and full throttle has been the talk of the session as they try and dial in the cars to get the right balance.
• There is a new tire combination on the cars this week and so far on long runs for this session they are holding up well without much fall off which is to be expected at this track.
• With 38 minutes left in the session, Jimmie Johnson was having the shocks and struts swapped out on the 48-car to give it a better feel around the track and over the few large bumps that are in the surface.
• Ryan Blaney is feeling confident in his car and was making moves in traffic that show he has a pretty good handling car as well as a fast one currently sitting 10^th on the charts with 35 minutes left in the session.
• Clint Bowyer made one run and said his car has something really wrong with it so they put scuffed tires on it inside of the qualifying tires and he said the car was still so loose he could wreck at any second. They are trying a lot of different things to tighten it up.
• Brad Keselowski loves the car that he has and has been making long runs in the session and the short run and long run speeds look steady and he’s able to hold the throttle wide open at both ends of the track.
• Martin Truex Jr. and Denny Hamlin are the two slowest cars in the JGR garage and he just hasn’t show much speed all weekend and qualified poorly.
• Kurt Busch started practice with a 15-lap run and that produced a lap sitting seventh on the charts. They changed the height a bit and he’s happy with it again but is having a bit of issue keeping speed with lap traffic slowing him down a bit.
• Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin nearly wrecked when Busch was blending in from pit road
• Ty Dillon got really loose off of turn two with Michael McDowell near him on the outside of him
• There is a group of about 20 drivers going around the track in a group with about 20 minutes left in the session to try and see how the cars will handle in a racing group and what the tires will do after several laps of that kind of racing.
• Daniel Hemric is still looking for tightness over the longer runs. He has fast speed on the short runs but wants more handling over the long run.
• With 15 minutes left in practice both Kevin Harvick and Martin Truex Jr.’s best laps have both been outside the top-30 and they both are having trouble with handling in race trim.
• 10 of the last 11 winners here have been former Cup champions but only one of them has won from the pole.
• It’s been a very race-like practice session today with a ton of different drivers trying different lines around the track.
• Ricky Stenhouse Jr. led the 20-lap average while Austin Dillon and Daniel Hemric led the single-lap, five-lap, and 10-lap averages.

Through Final Practice

This table is a new addition to the practice notes this season and hopefully it will help breakdown exactly where each driver fits in the practice speed listings. The drivers are in order of DK salaries and the columns mean the following: Prac to Qual is the difference between the Comb. Prac column and the Qualifying spot they have for the race. A positive number indicates they ran faster at average practice speed than where the qualified and should help show who has position differential upside and who may not. The Qual column is simply listing their qualifying spot for the race. The Comb. Prac column is an average of all of that driver's single lap speeds from practice. For example say Driver A registers 195 mph, 196 mph, 197 mph, and 198 mph in the four practices for a race, their Combination Practice speed would be 196.5 and then that speed is ranked amongst the other drivers to get the number you see in the column 1 is fastest and 40 is slowest. The others rank where that driver placed for that session and that session's 10-lap average where again 1 is fastest and 40 is slowest.

Opening Practice Pennzoil 400

Las Vegas Motor Speedway

Friday, March 1 3:05 PM ET

50 minutes in length

Weather

Air Temp: 67 degrees I Track Temp: 81 degrees I Wind: 6 mph

It’s overcast and partly sunny keeping the track temp a bit cooler

Penalized Drivers

No drivers were penalized in this session

Top-20 Single Lap Speeds

Best Lap Averages

No drivers drove 10-consecutive laps in this session

Items of Note:

• The package this week is slightly different than what was on the car last week. The Air ducts on the front of the car were changed and are similar to those used in the All-Star Race last year. It should mean more passing this week as compared to last week at Atlanta.
• The ducts aren’t brake ducts like the last two weeks and so they will crave a bigger spot through the air making cars behind the leader drive better.
• In the test at Vegas in January, Brad Keselowski was one of the fastest cars that weekend.
• Most cars are doing single-lap mock qualifying laps in this practice.
• Kyle Busch said the groove is already worked in higher than he thought it would be at this point in the weekend.
• Kurt Busch says his car is chattering in the bumps on the backstretch and that’s making it tough to hold it steady on the track.
• Joey Logano and the 22-team is trying to find the perfect balance between the height of the car and the grip level while keeping the spoiler out of the wind as much as possible.
• Daniel Hemric is the fastest car on the track with 25 minutes left in the session.
• Kevin Harvick didn’t like what he felt in his car after just one lap on the track and there was quite a bit of chattering you could hear inside the car.
• Early in the session a lot of the top cars on the speed charts are Chevys as they continue to show speed in the new package.
• A few teams were sending a couple of cars out to try drafting in this package including the entire JGR stable who ran together for two laps and jumped up the speed charts with just that short run.
• Kevin Harvick said the car bottomed out severely on his last run and is now out on another run with 22 minutes left.
• Following the comments from Kyle Busch about the groove coming in, several drivers have now gone up to run the higher line by the wall.
• JTG Daugherty Racing utilized drafts in their single-lap runs with 18 minutes left in the session and Ryan Preece and Chris Buescher both jumped into the top-10 lap speeds.
• SHR cars plus Matt DiBenedetto went out in a four-car pack and the drafting worked as DiBenedetto jumped from 27^th to 7^th using that strategy.
• Qualifying on Friday night is a timed session in which multiple cars will be out on the track at the same time as opposed to single-lap single-car runs.
• As practice wound down a ton of cars were on the track at the same time working on how to use the draft to run the fastest lap.