‘What you saw in practice is what you should expect in the race,’ Ricky Stenhouse Jr. gives his verdict on Sundays Atlanta Cup Series after topping Saturday’s practice session


‘What you saw in practice is what you should expect in the race,’ Ricky Stenhouse Jr. gives his verdict on Sundays Atlanta Cup Series after topping Saturday’s practice session

Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

With the thunderstorm wiping out all of Friday’s action in Atlanta, the 50-minute practice session that was allotted to the Cup Series driver suddenly became much more important than before. The teams were quick to react to the situation to make sure they will have a clean but effective full 50 minutes practice session in Atlanta and they did exactly that.

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Since the Saturday session is the only time before Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500  all 37 entered cars drove around the 1.54mile newly reconfigured Atlanta Motor Speedway track as its new  28 degrees banks, 55 feet to 40 feet in the corners, the 52 feet wide front stretch and the backstretch 42 feet wide all makes the track more superspeedway like contrary to its intermediary status.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. drove his No. 47 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for JTG Daugherty Racing to the top in the Practise session with an average lap speed of 186.616 mph followed by Kyle Busch second-fastest with the speed of 186.390 mph. Christopher Bell, Harrison Burton, and  Joey Logano finish up the top 5.

Ryan Blaney completed the most laps (60). Kevin Harvick, Brad Keselowski, and Alex Bowman all struggled and posted average speeds 30th or lower.

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Find out what Ricky Stenhouse Jr. had to say about toping the practice

Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

Ricky Stenhouse Jr. suggested that fans can expect what happened in the practice sessions to repeat itself on the final race and added that the turn 3 entry is too tight. He went on to add none of his fellow drivers drove aggressively adding the track position is going to be important on Sunday.

“What you saw in practice is what you should expect (in the race). It does get a little tight on entry, especially into (Turn) 3. Two-wide is comfortable,” Ricky Stenhouse Jr. said.

It was practice so nobody was trying to show really three-wide and were not being too aggressive. I think track position is going to be important and we didn’t see a lot of tire wear,” Ricky Stenhouse Jr. added.

Also read: Dale Earnhardt Jr. claims that NFL quarterbacks possess some specific skill which can get them a shot in NASCAR

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