Race Weekend Central

Pole Sitter Jeff Gordon Paces Friday’s First Practice

It’s just practice. Following a chaotic evening of racing during the Budweiser Duels, Jeff Gordon paced the sixth practice session in preparation for the Daytona 500.

Only 14 cars participated in Friday morning’s session, with each of the cars completing single-car runs. Setting the pace at 193.079 mph, Sunday’s pole sitter ran 17 laps after finishing in the runner-up position during the first Duel on Thursday evening.

Michael Waltrip, Martin Truex, Jr., Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano joined Gordon inside of the top five during practice. With no smaller teams participating, the select few that hit the high-banked 2.5-mile track were drivers that either narrowly made it into the Daytona 500, experienced issues during the Duels or a few larger teams just making final adjustments.

There will be one more practice session today at 2 p.m. ET, with final practice at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday.

Friday morning Daytona 500 practice results:

1. Jeff Gordon: 193.079 mph.

2. Michael Waltrip: 192.485 mph.

3. Martin Truex, Jr.: 192.345 mph.

4. Brad Keselowski: 192.270 mph.

5. Joey Logano: 192.258 mph.

6. Paul Menard: 192.102 mph.

7. Matt Kenseth: 191.951 mph.

8. Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.: 191.947 mph.

9. Jamie McMurray: 191.510 mph.

10. Trevor Bayne: 191.201 mph.

11. Austin Dillon: 190.779 mph.

12. Casey Mears: 190.710 mph.

13. Michael Annett: 190.142

14. AJ Allmendinger: 189.921 mph.

 

 

About the author

Joseph started with Fronstretch in Aug. 2014 and worked his way up to become an editor in less than a year. A native of Whitestone, New York, Joseph writes for NASCAR Pole Position magazine as a weekly contributor, along with being a former intern at Newsday and the Times Beacon Record Newspapers, each on Long Island. With a focus on NASCAR, he runs our social media pages and writes the NASCAR Mailbox column, along with other features for the site.

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