Larson leads Fontana practice

Kyle Larson's red hot start to the 2017 season continued Friday morning at Auto Club Speedway.

Larson was fastest in the first and only practice of the day with a lap of 189.071 mph over Denny Hamlin at 188.462 mph. Kevin Harvick was third fastest at 188.344 mph with Larson's Chip Ganassi Racing teammate, Jamie McMurray fourth fastest at 187.940 mph, and Kevin Harvick rounded out the top five at 187.588 mph.

The rest of the top 10 were Austin Dillon (187.485 mph), Ryan Blaney (187.471 mph), Matt Kenseth (187.422 mph), Kyle Busch (187.417 mph), and Brad Keselowski (187.212 mph).

In addition to a brief delay for an owl (!) on the track, there was one incident during the session.

Six-time and defending Auto Club 400 winner Jimmie Johnson will go to a back-up car for the remainder of the weekend after spinning with 21 minutes left in the session. Johnson was on a mock qualifying run when he got loose in Turn 4 and spun down the track into the grass, sending up a cloud of dirt and damaging the nose of his Chevrolet.

"Qualifying has been tough on us for the last few years and we just showed up at the track swinging hard and trying to get all that we can," Johnson said. "Crossed the line there for sure, and car came around on me. But we got another great Lowe's Chevrolet coming out. I thought we might be able to stick with this one but that divot we took was just too much on the front end of the racecar.

"Not the way we wanted to start the weekend but only way we're going to get better without testing is just to keep trying harder in practice and swing harder. We know we got the race side in a respectable spot, it's just starting better on Friday's."

Johnson was 24th in the session with a lap of 185.639 mph.