Kevin Harvick is still living up to favorite status on Championship Eve at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Harvick’s early flyer of 175.069 mph in the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Chevrolet was enough to give him top honors in this afternoon’s second Sprint Cup practice session. He was second in yesterday’s opening practice and then qualified fifth – highest among the Championship 4 – for Sunday’s Ford Ecoboost 400.
Second-fastest in this session was Sunday’s pole sitter, Jeff Gordon, who topped out at 175.029 mph. Brad Keselowski popped a lap of 174.498 mph to go P3, but also sustained right-side damage on his No. 2 Team Penske Ford thanks to a late run-in with the wall.
Jimmie Johnson was fourth-fastest with a lap of 174.222 mph, followed by two more title contenders in Denny Hamlin (173.969) and Joey Logano (173.589). Ryan Newman was the slowest of the Champ 4 at 172.712 mph, good for 12th on the time sheets.
Newman spent some time in the garage due to repairs for a broken right-front tire bead blower on his No. 31 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet.
He also sustained front splitter damage in the session; Newman later confirmed that was due to hitting a piece of debris (see the tweet below from the AP’s Jenna Fryer).
It’s presumed that he’ll have a new splitter on his car by today’s final practice session at 3 p.m. ET.
The session was slowed for one red flag. Five minutes into the 50-minute run, Brian Scott suffered an apparent engine failure down the backstretch.
Scott quickly took his heavily smoking No. 33 RCR Chevy to the garage, and after a red flag for clean-up, the practice resumed green conditions with 30 minutes left.
