HOMESTEAD, Fla. -- Kyle Larson is hopeful his fast performance in Tuesday's rain-interrupted NASCAR Sprint Cup Series test at Homestead-Miami Speedway will be a harbinger of good things to come when the series returns to the track for the Nov. 20 season finale.
The 24-year-old, who was eliminated after the opening round of this year's Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup playoffs, would have preferred that his test session work contribute to deciding the Sprint Cupchampionship later at Homestead. But he will gladly go for the track trophy instead this year.
"Homestead is probably my favorite track for racing the trucks and XFINITY series and for Cup, it's my second favorite to Bristol," said Larson, who has a win here in the XFINITY Series.
"I always enjoy coming here and running really close to the wall. It's a real race track where I feel like driver can make up a lot. You always have to have a good car but I feel like the driver can have an impact here."
Larson's No. 42 Target Chevrolet paced the field in the morning session at the 1.5-mile track, just ahead of fellow Chevy driverChase Elliott, who sits 25 points back from the cutoff as the series heads to the Talladega eliminator this weekend. Ryan Blaney was third fastest in the opening session.
Elliott led Larson in the afternoon session, which was extended two hours because of the rainy weather, lasting till 7 p.m. Larson,Kurt Busch, Carl Edwards and Austin Dillon rounded out the top five on the speed charts in the afternoon session.
Many of the teams here were specifically non-specific in their goals for the two-day test, guarding their objectives and the pursuit of them.
Ford driver Brad Keselowski was less circumspect and certainly less technical in explaining his team's intent this week.
"It's always a little complicated to explain," he said smiling. "We're always working on them, always making them better and we've come up with a couple things and we try to validate them on track.
"We put them through all these engineering tests with all these fancy computer simulations telling us if it's going to work or not work. And we get pretty confident it's going to work, but like to backstop check it. We're going through a lot of things we've been doing with the proper implementation of all these gizmos to check things you're allowed to use in testing. Just validating the parts and pieces."
Veteran Carl Edwards said he just likes to get laps here in advance of the series crowning its champion and that his Joe Gibbs Racing Team welcomed the opportunity to try new things.
"We're just working on a bunch of different things," Edwards said. "This sport is evolving so quickly and all of the teams are pushing. I talked to (crew chief) Dave (Rogers) this morning and all the Chase contenders are up there and fast. We're working on a bunch of different things."
Some teams, most notably, Martin Truex Jr.'s Furniture Row Racing team opted not to use the Homestead test -- something Edwards said he understood as well.
"One of the things that can happen is you can come test and be too confident in what you find out," Edwards said. "We're just kind of going through some things and really having fun.. …Even if we don't gain anything huge for the car, we're having a good time."
The series is set to conduct another full-day test at Homestead on Wednesday.
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