With Texas changes, six-time winner not even a NASCAR favourite

Jimmie Johnson has led more laps at Texas than any other NASCAR Cup Series driver, and won a record six times there.

But all that was before the entire 11/2-mile track was repaved, and turns 1 and 2 were reconfigured.

“It’s a clean sheet of paper. You can’t pick a favourite right now,” Johnson said Friday. “Any time there is a reconfiguration, a new asphalt, it’s a total game changer. All of past history is now out the window and it’s like we are coming here for the first time.”

Even for guys like Johnson, who will make his 28th start Sunday at the Texas track that was completely repaved earlier this year for the first time since 2001.

“Everyone is on equal playing ground,” Trevor Bayne said. “Nobody has 10 years of notebooks to go to and say, ‘I am Kevin Harvick and I run the bottom at Atlanta and I am really good at it.’ You can’t do that now. You don’t know what you need to do.”

On only the second lap of a nearly two-and-a-half-hour practice session Friday, Denny Hamlin got loose and spun through turns 1 and 2, but was able to keep his car off the wall. Kyle Busch later made slight contact with the rear of his car against the outer wall after going too high into the wider and lessbanked area on the track.

“I just missed the entry point getting into Turn 1,” Busch said, referring to the area in the track where the changes begin.

Chase Elliott wasn’t as fortunate, forced into a backup car after crashing the primary No. 24 Chevrolet coming out of Turn 2.