Holly Cain
NASCAR Wire Service
SPEEDWAY, Ind. – 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick set the pace in NASCAR Cup Series Brickyard 400 practice Friday afternoon at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, turning a lap of 182.582 mph in the No. 45 Toyota – out-pacing Ryan Blaney’s No. 12 Team Penske Ford by .177-second. Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin was third quickest in the No. 11 Toyota.
Reddick also posted the best 10-lap average speed, followed by Hendrick Motorsports’ Kyle Larson and Hamlin.
“It seemed pretty solid,” Reddick said of his car. “When you come to a place like this, that’s always something you hope for. I’ve been fortunate we’ve run the road course here and we’ve been really, really strong. Obviously it seemed like [fellow Toyota driver] Denny [Hamlin] had a really good test and we were able to get some good data from him.”
“Tracks like this, it’s always a question mark to some degree, you know? How close is your sim preparation going to be? But it seemed like everyone did a pretty good job. Pretty happy with how the car drives.”
The 55-minute session had a brief caution period for debris midway through, but was otherwise uneventful in the series’ return to the historic 2.5-mile Indianapolis oval for Sunday’s race (2:30 p.m. ET on NBC, IMS Radio Network, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
JGR’s Christopher Bell and Hendrick Motorsports’ Alex Bowman rounded out the top-five in practice for Sunday’s race – the first time the series has raced on the oval since 2020.
Series championship leader Chase Elliott was 12th quickest in Friday’s practice, his teammate Larson – who trails Elliott by a mere three-points in the standings – was sixth quickest.
Larson, who competed in May’s Indianapolis 500, is driving the No. 5 Chevrolet with the same paint scheme he was scheduled to drive later that that day in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. After a rain delay at Indy, Larson didn’t arrive in time to race it before rain showers ended the Charlotte race early.
There are three former Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval-race winners entered this weekend – including four-time Brickyard champion Jimmie Johnson, two-time winner Kyle Busch and 2018 winner Brad Keselowski.
Qualifying for the Brickyard 400 is scheduled for 1:05 p.m. ET Saturday (USA Network, NBC Sports App, Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Chandler Smith led the NASCAR Xfinity Series 55-minute practice early Friday afternoon posting a lap of 166.756 mph in the No. 81 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota – .060-second better than Parker Kligerman in the No. 48 Big Machine Racing Chevrolet.
IndyCar veteran Conor Daly was third fastest, followed by Brandon Jones and Riley Herbst. Current championship leader, Stewart-Haas Racing’s Cole Custer was 11th on the speed chart.
The NASCAR Xfinity Series’ Pennzoil 250 is Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET (USA Network, Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
NOTEBOOK:
*Hendrick Motorsports’ Elliott holds a slim three-point edge over his teammate Larson atop the NASCAR Cup Series championship with five races remaining to settle the regular season title. Reddick is only 15 points back and Hamlin is only 20 points off the pace entering Sunday’s Brickyard 400.
Asked about the close title race, Elliott reiterated Friday afternoon the importance of winning that Regular Season Championship is not so much to claim the “title” but because of the valuable 15 bonus points it rewards the driver; a bonus that is carried throughout each round of the Playoffs.
“We’re trying to win it,” Elliott said emphatically. “We’re trying to run as good as we can to accumulate as many points as possible to win the 15-points. I mean, that’s all that matters. The Regular Season Championship is really meaningless, it’s just [about] the points.”
The 2020 NASCAR Cup Series champ certainly knows first-hand how crucial that guaranteed bonus is for each Playoff round. It was an incredible help for him in 2022, even though he didn’t ultimately take the title.
“We just had a really good first half of the year and then we ran really bad those last eight-and-a-half weeks,” Elliott recalled. Without those points, we would have been long out of it, in my view. Mathematically, I’m not exactly sure where we would have been. Just going off the way we ran, we needed to be a lot better and that certainly helped to have some points to lean on because it would have been really, really tough without that. So, they can man a lot.
“You hope that you’re running good enough that you don’t need them is the goal that everyone has.”
*Reigning NASCAR Cup Series champion and last week’s Pocono (Pa.) Raceway winner Ryan Blaney reiterated his strong motivation to win Sunday’s Brickyard 400 – at a track owned by his boss Roger Penske and for a team that’s IndyCar driver Josef Newgarden won the Indianapolis 500 in May.
In fact, Blaney, smiled, and promised, “Kissing the bricks is like a dream come true, I’ll lick the bricks if I win, that’s for sure. It’s going be nasty but it’s going to happen.
“Kissing the bricks, that’s just what everyone wants to do. … to be able to do that with RP (Penske), that would be like the coolest moment in my life.
“We know how special this place is, it’s not even talked about in our camp,” the driver of the No. 12 Team Penske Ford continued. “You just know what it means. It’s meant the world even since I got there in 2012 before he [Penske] owned the race track.
“We have a unique opportunity to sweep Indy this year with Josef winning the 500 and us coming here and having a good shot on the NASCAR side, so there’s a cool opportunity to do something special. That’s what you want to do for our team, you want to make memories and do well by his race team and do well by him. Big weekend and a lot of pressure on us, but this race team likes pressure.”
Blaney’s best showing in six Indianapolis oval starts is seventh place in 2019.
*Before taking his place on the podium to answer reporters’ questions Friday, Josh Berry stood off by himself in the Media Center looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway front-straight below.
The driver of the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford is one of 10 fulltime NASCAR Cup Series drivers entered for Sunday’s Brickyard 400 that has never competed on the historic 2.5-oval before. During his time in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, races were held on the track’s infield road course.
“It definitely feels different coming here to run the oval than it did the road course,” Berry said. “I think just getting to take in the oval and just the history behind it, is something that’s going to be really fun. This is my first time up here, so just checking things out a little bit.”
Berry conceded he has an advantage in his back pocket – crew chief Rodney Childers led the former driver of the SHR No. 4, Kevin Harvick, to back-to-back wins the last two races on the big oval.
“I think obviously he’s really excited to get back here because they won the last two Brickyard 400s,” Berry said. “I feel like we’re leaning on each other and communicating like we always do. … The team’s got a little extra confidence this week for sure.”
A victory this weekend would be crucial for Berry’s team with only five races remaining to set the 16-driver Playoff field, Berry – a series rookie – is currently ranked 21st in the Playoff standings, 144 points out of the final points transfer position.
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