Bubba Wallace fastest in NASCAR Cup practice at Nashville

Wallace’s No. 23 Toyota posted an average lap speed of 161.708 mph to lead the 50-minute session, a stark turnaround from the series’ last race, where he was the first car out of the race due to an engine failure.

In all, Toyotas posted five of the top-10 average lap speeds in the practice.

“I’m proud of them. We needed this, hell, I needed this,” said Wallace. “Our whole team needed it. It’s just been bad luck after bad luck every week.

“We were the first car out of the race two weeks ago and we were the first car on top of the (leader) board. I’ll take that trade-off but practice doesn’t mean anything. It’s shaping up to be a good weekend.

“Went out, it had a lot of speed, it did what I wanted it to do. Just really small things that we need to tweak on to be better.”

Kyle Busch ended up second-fastest (160.936 mph) and Tyler Reddick was third (160.456 mph). Last year’s race winner, Kyle Larson, was fourth and William Byron rounded out the top-five.

“The track is a lot different,” Larson said. “I don’t think the groove was nearly as wide. Hopefully, the groove will widen out. I felt our last run was pretty decent.”

Completing the top-10 in single average lap speeds were Kurt Busch, Ross Chastain, Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin and Martin Truex Jr.

Blaney completed the most laps (55). There were no serious incidents during the session.