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Brickyard 400 Practice Notes

7/28/07, Speedway, IN – Reed Sorensen was fastest today in final (and only) practice for Sunday?s Allstate 400 at the Brickyard at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Sorensen led a trio of Target-Chip Ganassi Racing Team drivers who made half of the top-6 fastest. Sorensen had a fast lap of 184.098 (48.887 sec.) while teammate David Stremme was second at 183.929 mph. Juan Pablo Montoya was the third member of the Ganassi team in the top-6 at 183.681 mph (6th fastest). Kyle Busch was third at 183.831 while Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Elliott Sadler filled out the top-5.

J.J. Yeley who is known to be in the hot-seat at Joe Gibbs Racing did not help his cause when he clammed the Interstate Batteries Chevrolet hard again the turn four wall with the left side of the car early in practice. “The car got going the wrong direction. We went out made three or four runs and the car was really good. We were going to make an eight lap run to see how our tire wear was and for whatever reason it got loose on the exit of turn four. It really caught me by surprise. We did a couple of things and the car was actually a little bit snug at that point. I was already on the throttle at that point and winding the wheel to get to the exit, the car got sideways. I thought I had it saved for a minute, I just couldn’t keep it the car caught up. It spun around and the left side hit the wall real, real hard. It is a shame, it is a brand new car and it was driving really, really good. We hadn’t done any kind of qualifying yet. We will have to go to a backup car and go from there.”

Robbie Gordon also had to go to a back-up car when hit the wall coming out of turn two.

Six cars will fail to make the race (49 attempting to qualify), the six slowest in practice of those in danger of going home early are, Ward Burton, Kevin Lepage, Ken Schrader, A.J. Allmendinger, Joe Nemechek and Kenny Wallace. Looking good are Scott Riggs was 8th fastest, Scott Wimmer 10th, Jeremy Mayfield, Brian Vickers and Dale Jarrett. Qualifying will start just after 5pm local time Saturday.

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