By David Morgan, Associate Editor
SPEEDWAY, Ind. – It was a Toyota train leading NASCAR Cup Series practice for the Brickyard 400 on Friday with Christopher Bell serving as the conductor.
Bell’s No. 20 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota jumped to the top of the board with a lap of 49.043 seconds, 183.512 mph, around the famed 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway and he would not be surpassed by the time the checkered flag waved on the 50-minute session.
“I mean, it feels good, but I’m very cautiously optimistic because this practice session went a lot like North Wilkesboro did too, and the race went terribly,”
“So yeah, I’m really proud of my team. They’re bringing great cars to the track. It shows that our prep process is doing well. And yeah, we just got to hopefully put the whole weekend together, but we’re off to a good start.”
John Hunter Nemechek, Ty Gibbs, Erik Jones, and Denny Hamlin would round out the top-five sweep for the Toyotas among the JGR and Legacy Motor Club entries.
“I think we’ve got good speed again,” said Jones. “We were a little bit further off on balance…just being tight, which I thought we fought some of that in the sim too. Overall, good speed again. We made a mock run there at the end and it was close, obviously, on speed.
“Tomorrow’s a big day. We’ve got to qualify well and just put the race together. We had a car last year that could have contended and it didn’t work out, so hopefully we can kind of make up for the race we had last year and finish it off.”
With track position being vastly important at Indianapolis, Bell explained that being able to carry the speed from Friday into qualifying on Saturday will be key for being able to contend for the win on Sunday.
“I certainly think it’s probably the most important Saturdays that we have on our schedule, but a lot of it just depends on the yellow flags,” said Bell.
“So, if the yellow flags are straightforward and don’t interrupt the strategy, then you need to qualify well. But we see it time and time again where the yellow will jumble up the field, strategy gets split, and then it doesn’t really matter.”
The remainder of the top-10 went to Kyle Larson, who is one of three former Brickyard 400 winners in the 39-car field, followed by Carson Hocevar, Tyler Reddick, Ryan Blaney, and Daniel Suarez.
Defending Brickyard 400 winner Bubba Wallace ran into trouble during the session when his No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota got into the outside wall and bounced off the SAFER barrier, but he was able to make it to the garage and to the attention of his crew, returning to the track a short time later.
He would finish the session scored 20th fastest.
Bubba Wallace makes early contact with the wall in practice. pic.twitter.com/Kq0d7ED1e7
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) July 24, 2026
Other issues came out of the Ford camp with Austin Cindric and Ryan Preece having problems of their own.
Cindric battled electrical gremlins in his Team Penske Ford throughout the session, first having to bring his car back to the garage when he reported that “everything shut off” after going over a bump on track.
His crew got him back on track, but shortly thereafter he was back in the garage with more electrical issues when the digital dash in the cockpit went off. Cindric was 18th fastest before his issues.
As for Preece, he cut down a left rear tire on his No. 60 RFK Racing Ford near the halfway mark in practice, but was able to get back to the garage without any further damage.
Next up for the Cup Series will be qualifying at 1:30 pm ET on Tru TV, leading into Sunday’s running of the Brickyard 400 at 2:00 pm ET on TNT.
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