In 2021, the ongoing trend in the NASCAR Cup Series has been the extreme speed shown by Hendrick Motorsports and Saturday Afternoon’s practice session from Nashville Superspeedway was not an exception, with the four car organization sweeping the top-three spots in the session.
Teammates William Byron and Kyle Larson ran the exact same time in the 50-minute session, logging a lap of 29.724 seconds | 161.091mph on their respective qualifying runs at the end of the run. Chase Elliott was third quickest in the session, with Ricky Stenhouse Jr, Tyler Reddick, Kurt Busch and Ross Chastain rounding out a top-seven sweep for Chevrolet. Denny Hamlin, Ryan Newman and Alex Bowman rounded out the top-10.
Other noteables include: Chase Briscoe (11th), Ryan Blaney (13th), Matt DiBenedetto (15th), Joey Logano (17th), Ryan Preece (18th), Corey LaJoie (19th), Christopher Bell (20th), Kyle Busch (21st), Kevin Harvick (22nd), Austin Dillon (23rd), Michael McDowell (25th), Brad Keselowski (26th), Martin Truex Jr (29th) and Cole Custer (30th).