Race Weekend Central

Darrell Wallace, Matt Tifft Fastest In Talladega XFINITY Practice Sessions

Darrell Wallace, Jr. and Matt Tifft were the fastest drivers in the first and second practice sessions on Friday for the Xfinity Series race at Talladega Superspeedway.

Both practice sessions were 55 minutes in length and will be the only XFINITY Series practice sessions this weekend at the legendary Alabama track. The first session had most cars drafting around and working on race trim while the second session had single-car mock qualifying runs.

There were no accidents in either session.

Practice One

The first practice session had Wallace first on the board after a lap at 49.768 seconds (192.413 mph). He was followed closely behind by teammate Ryan Reed’s 192.355 mph. Time wise, only .015 seconds separated the two Roush Fenway Fords.

Ty Dillon ended the session third at 191.827 mph. Dillon comes into this weekend with an average finish of 14.9 in his past nine restrictor plate races in this series. Tifft was fourth and was the fastest Toyota at 191.670 mph.

The top 5 was rounded out by Austin Dillon, who was the fastest of the five Sprint Cup drivers entered this weekend. Daytona winner Chase Elliott was eighth, Aric Almirola was 17th, defending Talladega winner Joey Logano was 18th, and Josh Wise only drove two laps in this session and ended up 36th.

Nine drivers ran 10 consecutive laps, led by John Wes Townley at an average time of 51.778 seconds (184.942 mph). Townley was also the 12th fastest in this session.

Full practice results can be found here.

Practice Two

Only 33 total cars ran in this session, and all of them ran mock qualifying laps out of the draft. Tifft was the fastest in this session at 181.918 mph. This is only Tifft’s second race in the No. 18 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing, after wrecking at Richmond. He also finished 21st at Daytona this year in JGL Racing‘s No. 24, his only other XFINITY Series restrictor plate start.

Ty Dillon was second at 181.515 mph, followed by his teammate Brandon Jones at 180.346 mph in third. Daniel Suarez heads to Talladega looking for just his second top 10 in restrictor plate races in this series, and ended up fourth in this session.

Jeremy Clements, who holds two top ten finishes at Daytona and Talladega, ended the session fifth. Clements is a definite underdog going into Saturday’s race, but with how equal cars are in the draft don’t be surprised to see the independent driver have a good finish.

Full practice results can be found here.

About the author

Michael has watched NASCAR for 20 years and regularly covered the sport from 2013-2021. He moved on to Formula 1, IndyCar, and SRX coverage for the site, while still putting a toe in the water from time-to-time back into the NASCAR pool.

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