DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Brad Keselowski continues to chase that elusive victory in the Daytona 500. He hopes to conquer that on Sunday at Daytona International Speedway.
“The Daytona 500 is still our biggest race of the year, and it still stings that I don’t have it,” Keselowski said.
Saturday morning, Keselowski’s No. 6 Ford Mustang was the fastest car in final practice with a best lap of 191.201 miles per hour. He ran 14 laps.
“The best practice is when you can’t get it right, but you can’t get it wrong,” Keselowski said. “I was happy to put that work in this morning to get that read and I think we did.
“When the Fords get together, I think they can be unstoppable.”
Only 17 cars took laps around the 2.5-mile Daytona International Speedway high-banked oval on Saturday. The other cars remained in the garage with those teams confident with the car for Sunday’s race.
Two-time and defending NASCAR Cup Series champion Joey Logano of Team Penske was second at 191.196 mph. Logano won the Daytona 500 in 2015.
Team Penske teammate Ryan Blaney was third in the No. 12 Menards/BlueDEF/Peak Ford at 191.180 mph. He was followed by Ryan Preece in the No. 41 HaasTooling.com Ford at 191.180 mph.
Harrison Burton of The Wood Brothers rounded out the top five with a fast lap at 191.176 mph in the No. 21 Motorcraft/DEXImaging Ford.
NTT IndyCar Series driver Conor Daly, the last driver to make the field in Thursday’s Bluegreen Vacations Duels with a struggling Chevrolet, was 13th fastest in the No. 50 BitNile.com Chevrolet for The Money Team at 184.362 mph.
The top six were Ford drivers. A.J. Allmendinger was the fastest Chevrolet driver in seventh with a best speed of 190.811 mph in the No. 16 Nutrien Ag Solutions Chevrolet for Kaulig Racing.
“It was pretty easy to be the quickest Chevy,” Allmendinger said. “There were only three of us that went out there.
“We decided yesterday not to practice just to kind of fine tune everything. There were only a few things that we wanted to try. I felt like in the Duels, we never got the track position, but the car had pretty good speed in it. So, more than anything, it’s me just trying to learn the techniques of this car on the superspeedway because I didn’t run any of the (Cup) races on superspeedways last year.
“Overall, I feel like it’s pretty good. It’s going to just be more about learning during the race tomorrow with 40 cars out there; how the car is reacting. It will be a little bit warmer than today. How the tires start to slide around and stuff with that many cars around you.”