Erik Jones was fastest in Saturday’s first Cup Series practice session at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, posting a top speed of 133.427 mph.
The top five was completed by pole-sitter Brad Keselowski (133.394 mph), Aric Almirola (133.366), Kyle Busch (133.240) and Ryan Blaney (133.138).
Joey Logano was sixth fastest, putting all three Team Penske cars in the top six.
Blaney recorded the most laps in the session with 54. Blaney is among five drivers who will be docked 15 minutes in the final practice.
Jones had the best 10-lap average at 132.854 mph. He was followed by Blaney (132.635 mph), Busch (132.332), Martin Truex Jr. (132.283) and Keselowski (132.227).
William Byron and Kyle Larson will go to backups cars after incidents in the session. Byron hit the wall in Turn 1 with about 45 minutes left in the session. He was 16th on the speed chart at the time of the incident.
“We have just been really loose and I tried to drive through it and see if it would come to me better and it didn’t,” Byron said. “It was even looser yet, and that was kind of the story, just got loose. Hopefully tomorrow we can have a good, solid day and go from there.”
Larson scraped the Turn 2 wall at about the same time as Byron’s wreck.
“I just locked up the brakes,” Larson said. “Simple as that, locked them up.”
Byron and Larson make it five drivers who will have backup cars this weekend, following Denny Hamlin (wreck), Ryan Newman (wreck) and Alex Bowman (drive shaft failure in qualifying). All will have to start from the rear of the field. Byron had qualified 22nd. Larson qualified 15th.
