TEXAS 1 - Lock-in Lineup

The more we see, the less we know. That was the theme in practice today. As we get with some of the night races, track conditions today were not even close to what they will be under the lights, therefore a lot of teams were "experimenting" the entire session, and just trying to "get in the ballpark" instead of nailing down an exact setup.

The numbers today were all over the map, with guys switching back and forth between race and qualifying trim. Here are the only numbers that are halfway worth looking at after P1, the 10-lap averages:

Rank	Car#	Driver	From Lap	To Lap	Avg Speed
1	99	Carl Edwards	29	38	179.901
2	14	Tony Stewart	1	10	179.817
3	27	Paul Menard	1	10	179.040
4	24	Jeff Gordon	48	57	177.253
5	2	Brad Keselowski	10	19	176.309
6	33	Clint Bowyer	18	27	176.188
7	95	David Starr(i)	12	21	175.440

So we're keeping our team fairly close to what we had going into today's practice:

A-LIST:
CARL EDWARDS (7 Starts Remaining) - The 99 has been solid on the larger tracks so far. He won the last race held on this right side tire (Homestead), and this team has been good with keeping up with changing track conditions like they will see on Saturday night. Edwards makes the team for me this week.

TONY STEWART (8 Starts Remaining) - One of the very few cars today I really liked was Tony Stewart. He made a lot of long green flag runs, and he was pretty decent on sporty tires. If they can make the right calls in the pits, they should be in race winning contention. They've brought one of their best chassis to this event, and Stewart is also a threat for the pole. The 14 gets the 2nd spot on my A-List this week.

Shame Jimmie Johnson worked almost exclusively on qualifying setup, so we don't know exactly what he's got (although one would have to assume Top 5 car). Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin were good, and at best you could put them on par with Stewart/Edwards. I was expecting a little more out of JGR cars, so as I said earlier, if I see 2 A-List drivers who look better, I'll use the "I'm afraid of JGR engine reliability" excuse as the tie breaker, so 18 and 11 are out. Both Matt Kenseth and Kevin Harvick were not that pleased with their setups and I can't have confidence in either one to be a race winner.

B-LIST:
The B-List is open to interpretation, no one really stood out in the B-List today, so I'm sticking with what I had coming into this week, see the previous post for explination on each driver:

RYAN NEWMAN (8 Starts Remaining)
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA (8 Starts Remaining)
DALE EARNHARDT JR. (8 Starts Remaining)
BRIAN VICKERS (9 Starts Remaining)


I like Newman and Vickers on their previous larger track results so far. Montoya and McMurray both look decent and good nab qualifying points. Junior gets on the team by momentum.

Mark Martin and Jeff Burton both looked alright in practice, but I'm not falling for it on either one of them. They have to show me some performance on these larger tracks to get a spot on the team for the future 1.5 milers. Martin Truex Jr. could be another start-save, but I'm rolling the dice on Vickers for my start-save, although Truex Jr. did say the car improved by the end of the session. Clint Bowyer was "getting in the ball park" so I'm not risking a start on Bowyer if they end up missing the setup.

C-LIST:
More of the same here:


DAVID RAGAN (8 Starts Remaining)
PAUL MENARD (8 Starts Remaining)

No one else to really consider here. You could get a start save out of Trevor Bayne but he's not up to par with the 6 or 27 this week, and you could hold onto Bayne and possibly get better value out of him elsewhere. If you do want to give a spot to Bayne, I'd actually bump Menard off since his car was "miserable" early but did improve later in the session.