William Byron leads wet COTA Cup practice

William Byron‘s EchoPark Texas Grand Prix weekend is off to a good start as he led the thirty-nine NASCAR Cup Series drivers in a rainy Saturday’s practice session at Circuit of the Americas. He set a fastest lap time of 157.694 seconds (approximately 2 minutes, 37 seconds) at 77.847 mph in fourteen laps around the wet Austin course.

Hendrick Motorsports team-mate Chase Elliott and Christopher Bell turned the most laps with fifteen each and finished as the fifth- and sixth-quickest drivers, respectively.

Austin Cindric, who led Xfinity Series practice on Friday, was the fastest part-time driver in eighteenth. Two spots behind him was James Davison, who won Wednesday night’s eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series event at COTA. Other part-timers include A.J. Allmendinger (twenty-second), Justin Haley (twenty-ninth), Ty Dillon (thirtieth), and Garrett Smithley (thirty-ninth). Kyle Tilley, the reigning Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona LMP2 winner and NASCAR newcomer, was thirty-sixth.

Some drivers went ran wide, off course, or spun including Elliott, Camping World Truck Series pole winner Kyle Busch, Joey Logano, and Daniel Suárez. Unlike the Truck and Xfinity practices, the incidents did not result in any caution flags.

Qualifying will take place on Sunday before the Texas Grand Prix; as thirty-nine drivers are entered, no one will be sent home as was the case for the lower series. It will be the Cup Series’s first time racing at COTA. The weekend is the third of eight with practice and qualifying for the Cup Series, but the second to actually hold the latter as Bristol Dirt in March lost its qualifying session to rain.

Practice results