McDowell leads Darlington Cup practice

Spire Motorsports teammates Michael McDowell and Justin Haley led the way in Saturday morning’s NASCAR Cup Series practice at Darlington Raceway.

McDowell sat atop the leaderboard with a lap of 169.531 mph (29.007 seconds). Haley’s fastest lap was 168.856 mph.

Ty Gibbs was the third fastest at 168.850, Carson Hocevar was fourth fastest at 168.394 mph, and Noah Gragson was fifth fastest at 168.135 mph. Todd Gilliland was sixth fastest at 168.002 mph, and AJ Allmendinger was seventh fastest at 167.653 mph.

The fastest Cup Series playoff driver was Bubba Wallace, in eighth place. Wallace clocked in at 167.243 mph. He was the only playoff driver inside the top 10 in practice.

Kyle Busch was ninth fastest at 167.203 mph, and John Hunter Nemechek completed the top 10 at 166.902 mph.

The rest of the playoff drivers in practice was Ross Chastain in 13th, William Byron in 16th, Chase Briscoe in 18th and Denny Hamlin in 19th. Briscoe is the defending winner of the Southern 500.

Those outside the top 20 in practice were Austin Cindric in 21st, Tyler Reddick in 22nd, Kyle Larson in 23rd, and Austin Dillon in 24th. Then it was Christopher Bell in 26th, Joey Logano in 27th, Ryan Blaney in 28th, Alex Bowman in 31st, Shane van Gisbergen in 32nd, Josh Berry in 33rd, and Chase Elliott in 34th.

There were two incidents in practice. However, they were not severe.

Ryan Preece caught the wall during practice, but did not bring out a caution. It is not uncommon for drivers to scrape the right side of the car from the walls at Darlington. Zane Smith spun during practice as he was trying to come to pit road, but did not hit anything. It also did not bring out a caution.