Spire Motorsports duo top Cup Series practice at Phoenix

Spire Motorsports teammates Daniel Suarez and Carson Hocevar were top of the leaderboard in Saturday’s NASCAR Cup Series practice at Phoenix Raceway.

Suarez led the way with a lap of 133.944 mph (26.877s). Hocevar, meanwhile, clocked in second fastest at 133.526 mph.

Chase Briscoe was third fastest at 133.417 mph, Ross Chastin was fourth fastest at 133.353 mph and Austin Cindric completed the top five in practice at 133.333 mph. Ty Gibbs was sixth fastest at 133.205 mph and Ryan Blaney was seventh fastest at 133.097 mph.

Christopher Bell was eighth fastest 133.038 mph, Tyler Reddick was ninth fastest at 132.964 mph, and rounding out the top 10 was the third Spire Motorsports driver, Michael McDowell. McDowell ran a fast lap of 132.876 mph.

Bell is the defending race winner of the spring Phoenix event.

Reddick got loose in Turn 2 and spun in the final few minutes of practice, but did not hit anything. The driver looking for his fourth consecutive win to start the season, put the car in reverse, as it spun to the entrance of pit road, and backed up out of the way.

Chris Buescher, who was in the first group of drivers on track for practice, suffered a right-front tire issue. Buescher had run 16 laps on track and was 11th fastest overall.

Connor Zilisch was 12th on the practice chart, Chase Elliott was 14th, and Denny Hamlin was 15th. Bubba Wallace was 16th, Kyle Busch was 17th, Kyle Larson was 18th and Joey Logano was 19th. Cody Ware was the 20th-fastest driver in practice.

Anthony Alfredo was 29th fastest in practice. Alfredo is driving the No. 48 for Hendrick Motorsports in place of Alex Bowman.

Riley Herbst, in the first group of drivers in practice, like Buescher, suffered a left-rear tire going down. He brushed the wall as a result. Herbst ran 35 laps in the session.

In the second group of drivers in practice, Brad Keselowski, a teammate of Buescher, blew a right-front tire and hit the wall in Turn 3. He had run 22 laps.

“No, it’s really surprising,” said Keselowski about whether there was a sign of an issue. “We saw Chris had an issue and pumped it up with a bunch more air to make sure we wouldn’t, and even tried to go slow for a few laps to build some air in it and not abuse it. Not sure why it would blow.”

Keselowski expects to be in a backup car for Sunday’s race.

Goodyear brought the same tire setup that Cup Series teams competed with in the fall race at Phoenix Raceway. It has also raced at Bowman Gray, the spring Martinsville Speedway race, North Wilkesboro Speedway, Richmond Raceway and New Hampshire last season.