Truex roars atop early Texas practice – Nascar

RELATED: Practice 1 results

Martin Truex Jr. rose to the top of an ever-changing leaderboard Thursday to lead the opening NASCAR Sprint Cup Series practice at Texas Motor Speedway.

Truex, the Daytona 500 runner-up, powered to a best lap of 192.892 mph around the 1.5-mile track in the Furniture Row Racing No. 78 Toyota. His lap was significantly slower than the track qualifying record of 200.111 mph set by Tony Stewart in October 2014.

“We were off a little bit at the start and got better each run and on our last run, felt really good about it,” Truex said. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a pole. I’ve had a few poles here at Texas and we’re going to be going for another tomorrow. I feel like we have a good shot at it.”

Brad Keselowski was second-fastest at 192.164 mph in the Team Penske No. 2 Ford in preparation for Saturday’s Duck Commander 500 (7:30 p.m. ET, FOX, PRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio), the seventh NASCAR Sprint Cup race of the season. He was just three thousandths of a second faster than Penske teammate Joey Logano, who posted the third-fastest lap of 192.143 mph in the No. 22 Ford.

Austin Dillon clocked the fourth-fastest lap (191.612 mph) in the Richard Childress Racing No. 3 Chevrolet. Brian Vickers, making his fifth start of the season in place of the injured Stewart, was fifth-fastest at 191.578 mph in the Stewart-Haas Racing No. 14 Chevrolet.

Jimmie Johnson, winner of three straight Texas races and five of the last seven at the Fort Worth track, was sixth-fastest in the 85-minute session at 191.360 mph in the Hendrick Motorsports No. 48 Chevrolet.

Defending Sprint Cup champion Kyle Busch, last weekend’s winner at Martinsville, was 28th-fastest in the Joe Gibbs Racing No. 18 Toyota.

Coors Light Pole Qualifying is scheduled Friday at 2:45 p.m. ET, with final practice set for 6:30 p.m. ET.