Stenhouse paces final Cup Series practice at Bristol

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was fastest in NASCAR Cup Series practice Saturday afternoon at Bristol Motor Speedway, as Alex Bowman got back behind the wheel for the first time in over a month. Stenhouse led the way with a lap of 124.573 mph (15.403s).

Noah Gragson was second fastest at 124.283 mph, Austin Cindric was third fastest at 124.186 mph, Erik Jones was fourth fastest 124.170 mph, and Bubba Wallace completed the top five in practice at 124.122 mph. Michael McDowell was sixth fastest at 124.098 mph, and Connor Zilisch was seventh fastest at 124.034 mph.

Ty Gibbs was eighth fastest at 124.034 mph, AJ Allmendinger was ninth fastest at 124.002 mph, and Kyle Larson rounded out the top 10 at 123.986 mph.

Larson is the defending winner of this event.

Bowman, meanwhile, was 16th fastest. His best lap was 123.818 mph. Sunday will be his first Cup Series race since March 1 at Circuit of the Americas. Bowman didn’t finish that event due to vertigo symptoms, which then sidelined him for the following four races.

“It felt OK,” Bowman said of his car. “This place is pretty difficult to come back to and make that single lap pace. So, we didn’t look great on the fastest lap, but our averages were OK. I think we have some things we can work on with our car, but just glad to be back.

“If we can get out of here with a solid top 15 finish on Sunday, we’ll be pretty happy with that and can kind of get things rolling back in the right direction.”

Cup Series championship point leader Tyler Reddick was 21st fastest in practice. Reddick’s fastest lap was 123.594 mph.

There were no significant issues in the session.

There are 37 teams entered in Sunday’s Food City 500. Chad Finchum is the only non-charter driver in the field for Garage 66.

Blaney ran the most laps in practice at 77. Noah Gragson was fastest in the best 10 consecutive lap average, while Blaney was fastest in the 15, 20, and 30-lap averages.

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