Bubba Wallace was the fastest overall in NASCAR Cup Series practice on Saturday morning at Homestead-Miami Speedway in his purple Grimace machine.
Wallace’s fastest lap was 169.088 mph (31.936 seconds) and came on his first lap on the track. He was among the first group of drivers to participate in practice. The 23XI Racing driver was also fastest in the best 10 consecutive lap average.
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“It’s good,” Wallace said. “I think the race is like 300 laps or something, so we’ve got to be fast for all of them. But the Grimace Toyota Camry TRD looks really good. Runs really good. I think the driver just has to show up and play really good tomorrow. So, it feels good to be back in Miami. I forgot how fun this place was.”
Wallace did not compete in the event at Homestead-Miami Speedway last season. After hooking Kyle Larson in the right rear the week before at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Wallace was suspended for one race.
Austin Cindric was second fastest at 167.999 mph and Ryan Blaney was third fastest at 167.764 mph. Christopher Bell was fourth fastest at 167.650 mph with Michael McDowell was fifth fastest at 167.468 mph.
Martin Truex Jr. was sixth fastest at 167.364 mph, ahead of Denny Hamlin in seventh at 167.152 mph. Tyler Reddick was eighth fastest at 166.935 mph, with Brad Keselowski at 166.770 mph and Chase Briscoe at 166.744 mph completing the top 10.
Kyle Larson, who is already locked into the Championship 4, was 17th fastest, while William Byron was 21st fastest and Chris Buescher, the slowest playoff driver in practice, was 32nd.
There was one incident in practice – Joey Logano clocked in 11th fastest overall before spinning off Turn 2 and hitting the inside wall on the backstretch. The Penske driver will go to a backup car for Sunday’s race and not make a qualifying lap.
“I was stuck in dirty air the whole run and I went to the bottom to try to pass Reddick and just lost it,” Logano said. “Just coming off the corner was throttling up and seemed everything was OK, and it just snapped around really late. It was kind of weird and surprised how late it happened.
“It’s a bummer. I thought we had a pretty good Shell/Pennzoil Mustang from the lap time perspective, and even being in traffic I thought we were decent. But we’ll have to pull out the backup and hopefully, it’s just as good.”
There are 36 drivers entered in the 4EVER 400 at Homestead.