No. 3 Car Returns To Top Of Scoring Pylon At Daytona 500 Practice

DAYTONA BEACH, Florida -- The iconic Richard Childress Racing No. 3 Chevrolet returned to a familiar spot on Friday afternoon, the top of the scoring pylon at Daytona International Speedway. Austin Dillon was the fastest driver in an incident-free NASCAR Cup Series practice session for Sunday's Daytona 500.

While pacing a practice session at Daytona is a long way away from hoisting the Harley J. Earl trophy, Dillon has done that before, too, as he won the Daytona 500 in 2018. Add in the fact that his teammate, Kyle Busch, scored the pole position for the Great American Race, and you can conclude that RCR has brought quite a bit of speed to Daytona International Speedway.

Alex Bowman, driving the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet, clocked in second-fastest in the session, as he was 0.041 seconds off the best lap time set by Dillon, and Justin Allgaier was third-fastest in the JR Motorsports Chevrolet.

Chase Elliott, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. rounded out the top-five fastest drivers in the session.

In all, it was a clean sweep of the top-10 fastest laps in the session for Chevrolet teams as Shane van Gisbergen, William Byron, Ross Chastain, Kyle Larson, and Connor Zilisch ranked in positions six through 10.

Byron, who went to a backup car, which was shipped overnight from the Hendrick Motorsports shop in Concord, NC, to Daytona, due to a crash in Thursday's America 250 Florida Duels, doesn't appear to have any issues with his backup car as he ranked firmly inside the top-10 lap times, and he also was able to click off 29 laps in the session.

The driver of the No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet is going for his third consecutive Daytona 500 win, which would make him the first driver to ever accomplish the feat if he can pull it off.

Chastain also shook down his backup car following a crash in Thursday's Duels. Chastain was able to get 19 laps in during the session, where he ranked eighth-fastest.

You had to scan your eyes down to the 11th position on the scoring pylon to find a driver of a non-Chevrolet. Josh Berry had the distinction of being the best of that group as he ranked 11th-fastest in his No. 21 Wood Brothers Racing Ford.

Berry hopes that his No. 21 car showing the best speed of the Ford camp will allow other Ford teams to choose him to latch onto in Sunday's race.

"I'd say it's definitely not a bad thing to show that you have some speed," Berry said in his post-practice press conference. "And we were in front I think when we ran that lap, they said."

While it only recorded the 11th-fastest lap of the session, Berry has a lot of confidence in his car, overall at this juncture in the race weekend.

"I feel good about my car, honestly, I feel really good about my car," Berry stated. "Felt good about it last night. Hopefully, it's time for a good race on Sunday."

Christopher Bell led the way for the Toyota contingent with the 21st-fastest lap time of the session.

Like Byron and Chastain, two other drivers had to go to backup cars following crashes in Thursday's Duel qualifiers.

Daniel Suarez (18th), and Chris Buescher (24th) are the other two drivers driving backup cars for the remainder of the weekend.