Well, it’s safe to say the 1.54-mile Atlanta Motor Speedway is officially a Superspeedway, at least when it comes to the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. In a very superspeedway-esque practice session on Saturday morning, Tyler Ankrum turned the fastest lap.
Ankrum’s best lap of 30.527 sec., which equates to 181.610 mph, was just good enough for the fastest lap as Matt DiBenedetto was 0.054 sec. slower in second.
Derek Kraus, Jack Wood and Hailie Deegan rounded out the top-five finishers in the session.
In the opening moments of practice, it appeared that trucks would only be able to line up in one drafting lane, but as the session rolled on, drivers got a bit gutsier and took more chances, going two and three wide at times.
The session was relatively clean, but Austin Wayne Self went for a spin late in the session, after he believed he cut a tire down, and the session concluded due to fluid on the track.
From the early return on this practice session, it genuinely looks like we will be seeing pack racing at Atlanta from the Truck Series in Saturday’s FR8 208 race. While there are still unknowns as we haven’t seen the other series practice yet, expect to see more of the same in the NASCAR Xfinity Series and Cup Series this weekend as well.
