Michael McDowell and Ford lead Friday's Daytona practice
Reigning Daytona 500 champion Michael McDowell topped Friday’s lone NASCAR Cup Series practice at Daytona International Speedway.
McDowell and his Front Row Motorsports teammate, Todd Gilliland, were drafting late in the session when McDowell posted his fastest average lap speed of 192.678 mph. McDowell had finished second in Thursday night’s second qualifying race.
Gilliland ended up second-fastest (192.361 mph) and David Ragan was third (192.274 mph). Chris Buescher – who won Thursday night’s second qualifying race – was fourth and his RFK Racing teammate, Brad Keselowski – who won Thursday night’s first qualifying race – ended up fifth.
Completing the top-10 average speeds were Cody Ware, Bubba Wallace, Chase Briscoe, Aric Almirola and Noah Gragson.
In all, Fords owned eight of the top-10 speeds.
The session was incident-free with 34 of the 40 cars entered in Sunday’s Daytona 500 taking to the track.
Most of those who practiced, spent at least some time in the draft while many also took time to practice getting on and off pit road.
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