Through Qualifying
Final Practice For Brickyard 400
Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Saturday, September 7 1:30 pm ET
50 minutes in length
Weather
73 degrees of Air Temp I Feels Like: 77 degrees I 3 mph of Wind
Penalized Drivers
No drivers were penalized for this final session.
Top-20 Speeds (Single Lap)
Best Lap Averages
Items of Note:
- Jimmie Johnson is focusing solely on race runs in this session and was extremely free in the first practice.
- The Henrick cars all went out together to make race runs together.
- Joey Logano is trying to sort out how to get passed a group of cars on the track in this new aero package but seems to be holding pretty evenly behind the group in front of him until they got side-by-side and then he pulled closer.
- Alex Bowman says his car is edgy everywhere when he’s following cars in traffic.
- Kyle Larson felt his car got looser in the corners each lap in to a nine-lap run and now he wants to get new tires at the garage.
- Several drivers have stated that if they are free in corner entry into Turn 1 it’s impossible to make good lap times here because the freeness compounds.
- Ryan Newman says his car is better but it’s still too free after complaining of the right rear spring in the first session. He’s only run four laps in 20 minutes in the final session compared to Joey Logano who’s run 20.
- Chase Elliott said they put too much front grip in the car and he wants it backed off a bit.
- Daniel Suarez says he was free in the first practice, they changed the setup between practices, and now they are on the splitter and not balanced front to back so they will have to change the setup again.
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr. is able to hold off Chase Elliott throughout a couple of laps as those two are one of several groups racing around the track with 20 minutes left in the session.
- Brad Keselowski and Daniel Hemric are another set of two cars that are racing each other later in the session and doing pit road speed tests.
- Brad Keselowski said on the radio that his car didn’t get worse but it’s hard to say it got dramatically better on the last run.
- There were quite a few mock qualifying runs happening later in the session along with several cars doing long runs.
- On his cool-down lap, Denny Hamlin’s car wouldn’t turn in Turn 4 and he hit the wall hard, and the car caught fire and stopped by the entrance to pit road. It took him a while to get out of the car with black smoke pluming out of the cockpit. He did get out of the car and has been taken to the infield care center but will absolutely need a backup car for Sunday.
Opening Practice For Brickyard 400
Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Saturday, September 7 11:05 am ET
50 minutes in length
Weather
72 degrees Air Temp I Feels Like: 77 degrees I Wind at 4 mph
Penalized Drivers
Matt DiBenedetto served a 15-minute penalty at the end of the session for failing tech twice last week.
Top-20 Speeds (Single Lap)
Best Lap Averages
Only a handful of drivers ran five-consecutive laps in this session.
Items of Note:
- Ryan Newman plans to spend this whole practice in race trim and hopes to get around other cars to see how it reacts in air. They are also planning on trimming out the car a bit more this week than they have in the past this year to try and get more stage points and qualify closer to the front.
- Jimmie Johnson has spent this week pumping up his team to come and locked down a spot in the playoffs this week. He is a four-time winner at Indy.
- Denny Hamlin has a ride height issue for his first lap on the track and it was the same one he had at Michigan.
- Jimmie Johnson nearly got into the wall on the first full speed lap into Turn 1. The front of the car was hopping, and he couldn’t get into throttle say the splitter was on the track and he went straight instead of turning.
- Due to a computer glitch early in the session, Ryan Newman was shown going 1,383 MPH on his first lap (clearly that’s not a real speed but just thought it was funny it was shown that way).
- Chase Elliott said he is fighting tight in the first two corners early in the session.
- Ricky Stenhouse Jr. says his car is edgy on entry and he can’t put full throttle into on exit.
- Alex Bowman was doing a pit road speed test and came in a bit too fast on entry but was fine elsewhere on pit road.
- Kurt Busch says he’s on edge in Turn 1 and it has a darty or loose feel when on stickers so he can’t run the laps the way he wants because of those two things early in the runs.
- Kyle Larson said it was a bit free early in the run but it was still manageable just needs some slight adjustments.
- Ryan Newman has some balance issue coming off of Turn 4 as it got very loose off the corners.
- Jimmie Johnson is dealing with balance issues when he gets too close to other cars with 20 minutes left in the session.
- Alex Bowman had the front of his car on the splitter while Bubba Wallace has the back of the car on the track and making sparks.
- Joey Logano and Martin Truex Jr. were working laps in front and behind each other to see how the balance was in their cars.
- Hendrick Motorsports has the most wins, top-fives, top-10s, and laps led in the history of the Brickyard 40.
- Matt DiBenedetto says his car gets a little free on entry and a little floaty on exit of the corners.
- Brad Keselowski won Team Penske’s first Brickyard 400 last year (Penske has 18 Indy 500 wins).
- Alex Bowman said he can get more on throttle time this run than he was able to his first two runs of the session.
- Kurt Busch says he’s now getting tight at the 7/8th mark of each corner as opposed to being edgy.
- Denny Hamlin said his car is hopping quite a bit and he’s off throttle quite a bit as well and feels he can’t keep the speed like some others can around the track.
- Prior to his run with 15 minutes left in the session he was on the radio saying that he didn’t like the spring in the right rear and the right rear feels worse than it did at the start of the session.
- Chase Elliott said he has grip on entry but in the middle of the corner under max vertical load conditions he loses the grip in the nose of the car.
- Joe Gibbs Racing is in position to sweep the four Crown Jewel races in 2019 as Denny Hamlin won the Daytona 500, Martin Truex Jr. won the Coca-Cola 600, and Erik Jones won the Southern 500 last week, meaning Kyle Busch hasn’t won one of them yet.
- Kyle Busch got a bit loose coming off of Turn 3 and then brought it to the garage for adjustment.
- There are a few drivers doing mock qualifying runs at the end of the session which has caused some changes a top the speed chart.
- There is a pack of cars racing around in the last few minutes of the session too.