Austin Cindric ended up fastest in Saturday&rsquo;s NASCAR Cup Series practice at Darlington that saw a pair of top drivers with incidents that will force them to miss qualifying.
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Cindric had the overall fastest average lap speed (167.270 mph), which he set in the Group B session.
Cindric&rsquo;s Penske teammate, Joey Logano, ended up second-fastest overall (166.517 mph) while Denny Hamlin was third (166.450 mph).
Ross Chastain and Tyler Reddick &ndash; who were both in Group A &ndash; completed the top-five.
Among those drivers who ran at least 10 consecutive laps, Logano had the top average speed (163.718 mph). Ryan Blaney and Reddick were second and third, respectively, in that category.
Group B Cindric set the fastest average lap speed of this session (167.270 mph) in the opening minutes.
Logano was second (166.517 mph) and Hamlin third (166.450 mph). Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson rounded out the top-five.
About nine minutes into the session, Elliott wrecked hard in Turns 3 and Turn 4 and did significant damage to his No. 9 Chevrolet.
His team was forced to move to a backup car and he will miss qualifying and have to start Sunday&rsquo;s race from the rear of the field.
&ldquo;Just had the left-rear (tire) going down on the back (stretch). I recognized it but I just couldn&rsquo;t slow down in time,&rdquo; Elliott said. &ldquo;I hate that. I don&rsquo;t know what to do. Hopefully, that&rsquo;s not a trend that continues tomorrow.
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s kind of a concerning thing. I saw (Harvick) had one in a similar manner but fortunately he was in a spot where he could keep going.&rdquo;
Just as the session ended, Brad Keselowski spun around but didn&rsquo;t appear to suffer any damage.
Group A Chastain topped the first practice session with an average lap speed of 165.659 mph.
Reddick was second (165.609 mph) and Kyle Busch third (165.397 mph). Daniel Suarez and Ty Dillon rounded out the top-five.
About eight minutes into the session Kevin Harvick got loose then came to a stop on the track with a flat left-rear tire.
Harvick&rsquo;s team was forced to the garage to replace the rear diffuser on his No. 4 Ford and was not able to continue in practice and will miss qualifying. He will start Sunday&rsquo;s race from the rear of the field.
In the final minute of the session, Corey LaJoie spun off Turn 4, which brought an end to the Group A practice. LaJoie had completed the most laps in the session (29).
<a style="color: #000000;" href="https://motorsportstats.com/results/nascar-cup-series/2022/goodyear-400/info">ALL RESULTS</a>
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NASCAR Cup Series

2022 Goodyear 400

Austin Cindric

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By Jim Utter

Austin Cindric tops Cup practice; Chase Elliott wrecks

The intriguing, serrated floor edge that Alfa Romeo revealed at the launch of its new Formula 1 car has been confirmed as a &lsquo;fake&rsquo; by team insiders.
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The Hinwil-based operation was the first squad to unveil a genuine 2023 challenger earlier this year at an event it held in Zurich.&nbsp;
Launch renders of the new C43 showed the car with a unique serrated solution that featured a run of fins all along the edge of the floor.&nbsp;
However, when the new car ran for the first time in a shakedown at Barcelona, the floor design was very different and was much more traditional.
That prompted a number of theories, including that Alfa Romeo could be waiting to unleash the floor later in the year, or it was a development route that got abandoned early on.&nbsp;
There were also suggestions that Alfa Romeo had played a trick with its launch images &ndash; and played around with the design to not show off what it was really doing with this critical area of the car.&nbsp;
With the season now underway, high-level sources within Alfa Romeo have confirmed that the serrated floor design was indeed a total fake &ndash; put on the car as a bit of fun and to distract rival teams about what it was up to.&nbsp;
What made the Alfa Romeo launch floor so intriguing was that while it seemed extreme, it did appear to be a perfectly acceptable approach to dealing with the current F1 regulations.&nbsp;
From a legality perspective, the vertical flap and the nine winglets attached to it appeared to obey the rules laid out for the floor edge and the 'edge wing', with the vertical flap they are anchored to being aided by the brackets that are also allowed.
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Other than the winglets being mounted upon the vertical flap, there were two interesting side effects to note in this solution.&nbsp;
Firstly, on the left, you could see how the flap would provide a corridor for the airflow between it and the sidepod's flank.&nbsp;
Secondly, on the right, the flap was mounted above the floor edge's level (dotted yellow line to help show the separation), with the brackets allowing the airflow a route with which to circulate to the outside of the flap.&nbsp;
However, while legal, it is now clear that Alfa Romeo never seriously intended to race with the floor &ndash; and instead it was all just part of the pre-season gamesmanship with rivals.&nbsp;
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Alfa Romeo

Formula One

By Jonathan Noble

Alfa Romeo’s mystery F1 2023 launch floor was a total fake

Toto Wolff insists his Mercedes Formula 1 team is "sticking together" amid comments from Lewis Hamilton that it 'didn't listen' to his input on the 2023 car.
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After making rapid progress towards the end of a troubled 2022 campaign, Mercedes was hopeful of closing the gap with Red Bull and Ferrari but instead has found itself further adrift in the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Mercedes came out of the 2023 season opener as the fourth-fastest team after Hamilton was powerless to resist Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso on his charge to the podium behind both Red Bulls. Team-mate George Russell was similarly beaten to sixth by Lance Stroll.
Having dialed out crippling porpoising issues with help from the raised floor rules for 2023, Mercedes hoped it would finally be able to unearth the full potential of its design philosophy.
But when Bahrain qualifying confirmed that Mercedes had regressed instead, team boss Wolff admitted the Brackley outfit would have to abandon the W14's design concept, saying he "didn't think this package is going to be competitive eventually."
After the race Lewis Hamilton told BBC 5 Live that the team 'didn't' listen' to his input on the 2023 car, saying: "Last year, there were things I told them, I said the issues that are with the car.
"I've driven so many cars in my life, so I know what a car needs, I know what a car doesn't need. And I think it's really about accountability.
"It's about owning up and saying: 'Yeah, you know what? We didn't listen to you. It's not where it used to be and we've got to work.'"
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Despite those hints of frustration from the seven-time world champion, Wolff insisted the team is sticking together and its strong relationship with Hamilton is intact.
"The Lewis situation is you heard him on the radio. He is an integral part of the team, picking the team up and we are all sticking together and I don&rsquo;t think that is going to change just because we had a start that was really bad," Wolff said.
"We have won eight constructors' championships and six drivers&rsquo; championships with him and that relationship holds.&rdquo;
Hamilton's Mercedes deal is running out at the end of the year, but Wolff says he is not yet worried about losing the eight-time world champion.
"As much as being transparent as to how we need to turn the car around, it is not the point to talk about the driver situation in 2024," he replied when asked if he has a plan B in case Hamilton decides to walk away.
"It is far too early, we need to all push in then same direction, the drivers, the engineers, all the management rather than throwing in the towel. We have never done that and we will not do it.&rdquo;
"We just need to really dig deep and deeper than we have every done and provide both drivers with a car they are able to fight with."
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Torger Christian Toto Wolff

Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton

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By Filip Cleeren

Wolff: Mercedes F1 "sticking together" amid Hamilton's 'didn't listen' remarks

McLaren technical director James Key says that the team's current problems result from a late change of aerodynamic philosophy triggered by the 2023 Formula 1 rule changes.
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Last summer the teams and the FIA agreed to a rise of 15mm in the floor edge height as part of an attempt to address porpoising.
Having tried the new spec in the wind tunnel, McLaren decided that it would be difficult to recover performance with the 2023 car with the package it was running.
Thus, in September, the team decided to take a different route, one that offered much more potential.
The call was made too late to ready the full new package for Bahrain, which is why the team is instead aiming to make a big leap when it is introduced in Baku.
"Where this happened actually is when we took the 15mm floor step," said Key.
"So we all agreed that as porpoising protection, which was very sensible given at the time last year that was still quite a major issue. It began to improve for everyone as things improved during the year.
"That sounds very small, but these floors are huge and incredibly sensitive. Look at how much downforce it generates, massive. So when we did it on our car, it actually gave us a much bigger loss than anticipated. It seems to have affected different teams in different ways.
"And to a certain extent, it seems to be related to the floor edge geometry that you're running at the time."
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The call was made too late to ready the full new package for Bahrain, which is why the team is instead aiming to make a big leap when it is introduced in Baku.
"Where this happened actually is when we took the 15mm floor step," said Key.
"So we all agreed that as porpoising protection, which was very sensible given at the time last year that was still quite a major issue. It began to improve for everyone as things improved during the year.
"That sounds very small, but these floors are huge and incredibly sensitive. Look at how much downforce it generates, massive. So when we did it on our car, it actually gave us a much bigger loss than anticipated. It seems to have affected different teams in different ways.
"And to a certain extent, it seems to be related to the floor edge geometry that you're running at the time."
"Which is a big change, because they're very big projects, and very complex projects.
"So I think the timing of the reg, and the fact that we took a particularly large hit, and then that it clearly wasn't going to come back easily, meant that we had to change direction quite late."
Key insists that the reason why the team didn't rush to get the complete new package to the first race in Bahrain was because it wanted to ensure that it was fully developed and understood.
"It wasn't like we were dawdling around and thinking what to do, and actually why don't we do this," he said. "It was sort of forced upon us by a recognition that the new regs weren't going to recover with what we knew from last year.
"That led to a completely refreshed and revamped approach to that area of the car. It takes a while to develop these things. We tried to get it for race one, it wasn't mature enough.
"It would have performed a bit better. But with these floors, you've got to maintain stability, good correlation and everything else to guarantee that it's going work, and it was a little bit risky for race one."
Asked by Motorsport.com if it was frustrating to have made the call so late, Key said: "Absolutely, I mean, it is frustrating because, to be honest, the route we're on now seems to be pretty prolific, it's doing what we hoped it would do. There's still some work to do.
"The development rate on that is so much higher than what we had. Had the reg been earlier or had we clocked the fact that actually you need to do a different thing with this four weeks earlier, we wouldn't be talking about it right now, to be honest.
"So it's a bit it's a bit of a shame, but we are where we are, and we're just going to recover from it."
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McLaren

2023 Bahrain Grand Prix

By Adam Cooper

How a 15mm difference triggered McLaren's F1 2023 woes

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The unique format was initially implemented in the first practice of the season-opening round on the Streets of St. Petersburg last month, with the 75-minute session starting with all cars beginning with 20 minutes of running. From there, the field was split into two groups – by odd and even numbered pit boxes – for two 10-minute segments on an alternating basis.With that being the baseline ...Keep reading

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Sunday’s EuroNASCAR Pro Race 2 – the last of the weekend – featured a 10-car accident that knocked out five competitors and shortened the race to 17 laps before Dutchman Liam Hezemans claimed the victory.Among those collected in the early-race wreck was part-time Xfinity Series competitor Ryan Vargas. He was able to continue and finished 12th.“I thought I was at Talladega for a minute,” ...Keep reading

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When performance wanes or is not up to standard, Cup Series teams tend to eventually turn to the mode of trying to fix what’s wrong – and many times that includes a change in personnel.When Elliott – the sport’s most popular driver – ended his 42-race winless streak on Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway, he did so with much of the same No. 9 Hendrick Motorsports team that was in place when ...Keep reading

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