In a rare Xfinity Series start, Erik Jones led the way in opening Xfinity Series practice in preparation for Friday’s (Aug. 16) Food City 300 at Bristol Motor Speedway. —- topped final practice.
Opening Practice
In his first start with XCI Racing, Jones led the way at Bristol in the No. 81 Toyota with a speed of 124.719 mph, just ahead of a pair of Joe Gibbs Racing teammates with Kyle Busch in second (124.581 mph) and Christopher Bell third (124.565 mph).
Current points leader Tyler Reddick turned the fourth quickest time (124.122 mph), as John Hunter Nemechek rounded out the top five (123.881 mph).
Cole Custer, Brandon Jones, Joey Logano, Ryan Sieg and Chase Briscoe filled positions six through 10.
The quickest JR Motorsports Chevrolet was Justin Allgaier in 12th. His teammate Noah Gragson made contact with the wall in the opening minutes of the session.
There was two incidents in the session. The first was from a broken shock that caused Josh Williams to pound the wall. The latter was due to a broken track bar on Brandon Brown‘s No. 86. Ironically enough, these two drivers had an incident last week at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course that led to a war of words on Twitter.
Nemechek led the way in 10-lap averages at 122.078 mph, while Briscoe turned 56 laps, the most of the 40 drivers to take a timed lap.
Full results from opening Xfinity Series practice at Bristol
Final Practice
For the second practice in a row, Jones was the quickest guy in town, running a fast time of 123.618 mph. The Michigan native has two Xfinity victories at Bristol in five starts.
Bell, who won the spring race at BMS was second on the board (123.339 mph), ahead of Logano (123.118 mph), Allgaier (122.842 mph) and Custer (122.669 mph).
Briscoe, Busch, Reddick, Gragson and Jeb Burton, making his fourth start of the season for JR Motorsports rounded out the top 10.
Custer was the quickest on long run speed, averaging 121.894 mph on 10-lap averages. Jones was just behind in that category. Meanwhile, Nemechek ran 101 laps, by far the most in the session.
Qualifying for Friday’s race is set to get underway on Friday at 4:05 p.m. ET.
Full results from final practice
Dustin joined the Frontstretch team at the beginning of the 2016 season. 2020 marks his sixth full-time season covering the sport that he grew up loving. His dream was to one day be a NASCAR journalist, thus why he attended Ithaca College (Class of 2018) to earn a journalism degree. Since the ripe age of four, he knew he wanted to be a storyteller.
Great job of leaving the practice results link there so people could click on it and look at practice. I enjoy the website, but I find myself having to look elsewhere for info because this is done half ass on frontstretch