Dillon paces Cup practice at Texas

Richard Childress Racing did not advance either of its cars in the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs but both still have speed.

Austin Dillon led the way in Saturday’s practice session at Texas Motor Speedway with a fastest lap of 187.643mph (28.778s).

Behind him was teammate Tyler Reddick at 187.526mph.

Alex Bowman was the fastest of the playoff drivers in third on the speed charts (186.974mph).

Joey Logano (186.838mph) was fourth fastest and Erik Jones was fifth (186.863mph).

William Byron (186.606mph) was sixth, Ryan Blaney (186.599mph) seventh, Bubba Wallace (186.561mph) eighth, Brad Keselowski (186.471mph) ninth, and Kyle Larson (186.458mph) 10th.

Larson is the defending race winner.

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Seven playoff drivers were 13th or worse in practice. Ross Chastain was 13th, Denny Hamlin 14th, Daniel Suarez 17th, Chase Elliott 19th, Chase Briscoe 20th, Christopher Bell 21st, and Austin Cindric 24th.

The session saw two incidents.

Cody Ware spun off Turn 2 and hit the inside wall on the backstretch. Ware, in the first group of drivers on track, said he was battling a loose race car before getting high off the corner and spinning. He drove his car straight to the garage and will not make a qualifying attempt.

When the track went back green, Erik Jones spun off Turn 4. It was a single car spin for Jones, who did not hit anything and had already clocked his fast lap. He went high in the corner to try out the high groove and found there was no grip.

Reddick ran the most laps in practice with 27. Also spending a lot of time on track was Noah Gragson with 26 laps logged and Chase Elliott with 25.

Logano led the way in the best 10 consecutive lap average over Bowman, Reddick, Byron, and Elliott.