Average Practice Speeds: Loudon – LENOX Industrial Tools 301

Practice went from irrelevant last weekend in Daytona to very important here at New Hampshire Motor Speedway. This is a 1.0-mile short track and it’s going to take a fast and good-handling car to win on Sunday, or even get to the front if you had a bad qualifying run. By the way, the full starting lineup for Sunday’s LENOX Industrial Tools 301 can be found by clicking here. Kyle Busch won the pole, his second career one here at Loudon. Starting up front is a major advantage at this track. There was a practice session on Friday afternoon followed by qualifying later that day. Then, on Saturday, there were two practices in which all of the cars were in race trim. If someone didn’t end up on the ten-lap average chart in either of those two sessions, chances are his car is terrible.

Important Practice Notes: In Happy Hour, Kasey Kahne had a tire go down, but I didn’t see much damage (if any) to his race car. Goodyear went around and checked a lot of the teams’ tires after this but didn’t make too much of a big deal about it.

Average Practice Speeds:

Average practice speeds are calculated by taking the average speed of each driver in each practice and multiplying it by the number of laps ran. When you do this for each practice and add the  totals together, and then divide by the total number of laps ran, you get an average of their practice speed, instead of just the one lap statistic you see when you look at practice sheets. I have found over the years that this is much more accurate as to whether or not someone has a car that is good for one lap or one that can consistently be fast. These numbers, however, can be skewed if a team puts new tires on frequently or rarely changes the tires. The following chart is the combined average speeds for each driver from the two Saturday practice sessions.

In the first practice (on Friday), the drivers with the fastest times were:

1. Kyle Busch – 133.385 mph
2. Greg Biffle – 133.119 mph
3. Kurt Busch – 133.086 mph
4. Kasey Kahne – 132.966 mph
5. Paul Menard – 132.822 mph
Click here for the complete results from this practice.

In the second practice session (first on Saturday), the five fastest drivers were:
1. Denny Hamlin – 131.478 mph
2. Jeff Gordon – 131.370 mph
3. Martin Truex, Jr. – 131.193 mph
4. Aric Almirola – 131.094 mph
5. Clint Bowyer – 131.004 mph
Click here for the complete results from this practice.

In terms of ten-lap average, the top five for the second practice were:
1. Denny Hamlin – 130.172 mph
2. Kasey Kahne – 130.108 mph
3. Kyle Busch – 130.072 mph
4. Jeff Gordon – 129.974 mph
5. Matt Kenseth – 129.889 mph
Click here for the complete ten-lap average chart for practice two.

In “Happy Hour”, the fast five were:
1. Denny Hamlin – 131.383 mph
2. Kyle Busch – 131.243 mph
3. Brad Keselowski – 130.936 mph
4. Clint Bowyer – 130.837 mph
5. Jimmie Johnson – 130.743 mph
Click here for the complete results from this practice.

When it came to ten-lap average, the best for Happy Hour were:
1. Denny Hamlin – 130.290 mph
2. Brad Keselowski – 130.142 mph
3. Kasey Kahne – 130.082 mph
4. Jimmie Johnson – 130.070 mph
5. Clint Bowyer – 130.042 mph
Click here for the complete ten-lap average chart for Happy Hour.