By David Morgan, Associate Editor
HOMESTEAD, Fla. – Chase Briscoe may be out of the hunt for the NASCAR Cup Series championship this season, but he’s still in the running to add one more win to the tally before the 2026 season comes to a close.
The driver of the No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota turned in the fastest time during the lone practice session of the weekend for the Cup season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, posting a lap of 32.680 seconds, 165.239 mph.
“I thought my car did everything it kind of needed to do to go contend for a win,” said Briscoe. “So yeah, I felt really, really good. I don’t know where it stacked up from a time standpoint per se, but from a feel standpoint, I mean, I feel really, really close. So yeah, excited for Sunday.”
After a layoff of more than a year and a half since the Cup Series has raced at Homestead, Briscoe described the first laps at speed as the same old Homestead that everyone knows and loves.
“Same old, just amazing Homestead,” said Briscoe. “Yeah, this place is so fun as a driver just because you can do so many different things and really manipulate your car and you just don’t ever run two laps the same.
“I’ve loved this place ever since the first time I came. So, I mean, there’s a few things I would say that’s different. It definitely feels a little bit rougher up along the wall and whatnot, but I mean, we just haven’t ran here in so long. I feel like this is the longest gap we’ve ever had to come back to a place that’s on the schedule, I guess, every single year. So yeah, it felt relatively like the same Homestead.
“It would’ve been nice, I think, just to get practice during the middle of the day. It cooled off a lot there at the end and this track just drives so differently based on the temperature. But overall, same old Homestead.”
Austin Cindric timed in second fastest, followed by the other two drivers not named Kyle Larson that are still in championship contention, Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell, albeit with very slim margins to be able to pull off the feat on Sunday.
Hamlin comes in 70 points back, with Bell 67 points in arears, meaning both are going to have a nearly flawless day and early trouble for Larson to be able to steal the championship.
“I mean, I don’t have any optimism. I don’t. I’m here to try to have fun and try to win the race if possible. But I don’t, yeah, I just, no matter what, I mean, there’s obviously a chance you can win the lottery as well,” Hamlin said with a laugh as he gave an honest assessment of his title hopes.
“But can you really count on that?”
Hamlin added that his focus this weekend was just on putting up the best performance as possible and let the chips fall where they may.
The remainder of the top-10 in practice went to Ryan Blaney, Daniel Suarez, Ty Gibbs, Joey Logano, Michael McDowell, and championship leader Larson.
Larson didn’t have a trouble-free practice though as he found the wall multiple times throughout the 50-minute session, and had to bring his No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet to the attention of his crew on a few different occasions.
“That was probably pretty excessive,” Larson said afterwards. “Yeah, I just didn’t feel very good. I just didn’t…yeah, I didn’t feel comfortable the first few laps and then I would feel okay. And then I don’t know, I just didn’t have like enough grip to run the wall like I needed to.
“I’ll just have to think about that and what I was doing wrong and then listen to my teammates, kind of what they had to say about their cars. But yeah, just a disconnect and comfort, I guess, from the first three laps to the end of whatever.
“I didn’t get to run super long because I kept getting glue stuck in the wall. Yeah, that was not a great practice, but I haven’t really even got to dive into it yet.”
The lone incident of practice came as the session was ending when Tyler Reddick plowed into the back of Zane Smith as everyone was checking up getting onto pit road. Reddick was heading onto pit road at a high rate of speed when everything came to a standstill in front of him and he had nowhere else to go.
Trouble on pit road as practice comes to an end. 🫣 pic.twitter.com/KFbDWiVwyB
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) November 6, 2026
“Everything happened so fast. I only really gathered that I crashed when it all happened,” said Reddick. “But watching the replay, I mean the 38’s left front’s locked up. So, I mean that’s late after the transition.
“I mean, everything’s telling me that it just felt like cars that had gone a lot lower than pit road speed. And I mean, yeah, by the time I could see cars turning in and stuff, I mean it was too late to miss the 38. And so, we wrecked.”
Reddick was kicking himself after the incident, explaining that the car prior to that was “the best car I’ve had here,” and adding that he did not know whether the damage to the front end, which was pretty heavy in his view, would be able to be repaired or if his team would have to revert to a backup car.
“We’ll see if we can get it back. I truly don’t know.”
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