Former Daytona 500 Champion Paces Wednesday's Opening Practice

Austin Cindric paced the field in Wednesday's opening practice session for the 2026 Daytona 500. | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

DAYTONA BEACH, Florida -- While practice times at Daytona International Speedway, or any superspeedway, aren't usually super telling of how a driver's weekend will fare, Austin Cindric will carry the slight mental advantage that comes with turning the fastest lap in the opening practice session of the NASCAR Cup Series season.

But even Cindric, the 2022 winner of the Daytona 500, admits there's next-to-no-advantage in turning the fastest lap in opening practice for the Great American Racing.

"It looks cool, that's about it," Cindric said of his name being at the top of the scoring sheet. "It's kind of funny to start that way, but totally not on purpose. Just wanted to get the car warm before making mock [qualifying] runs, and just run into a couple of other cars and got a big draft, and yeah, that's that."

The driver of the No. 2 Team Penske Ford Mustang Dark Horse turned a fast lap time of 48.025 seconds (187.402 mph) on his third of 13 laps around the 2.5-mile speedway in the session. Cindric, who was one of a few drivers in the field, who was assisted by drafting help in the practice session ahead of Wednesday night's single-car qualifying session, clocked in 0.121 seconds ahead of Ross Chastain, the second-fastest driver in the 50-minute practice session.

Corey LaJoie, one of the eight drivers piloting "Open" entries battling for the four spots remaining in the Daytona 500 starting lineup, registered the third-fastest lap time in the session with a 48.253-second lap time. LaJoie is piloting a fourth RFK Racing car, which is carrying the No. 99.

Bubba Wallace, the driver of the No. 23 23XI Racing Toyota, and Daniel Suarez, who moved to the No. 7 Spire Motorsports team in the offseason, rounded out the top-five in the session.

Again, with a mixture of drivers utilizing the draft and others not doing so in the session, the end results will likely not yield much information on who will ultimately claim the pole position for the Daytona 500 in Wednesday night's qualifying session.

Daytona 500 qualifying is set for Wednesday, February 11, and will be televised on FS1 with television coverage set to kick off at 8:15 PM ET. The top-two qualifiers will lock in their starting spots on the front row for Sunday's Daytona 500, while the rest of the starting positions in the race will be set by Thursday's America 250 Duel Qualifying races.