Florence was packed for South Carolina 400 practice and other notes

Understatement of the day: The pit area at Florence Motor Speedway was crowded and it made practice for the South Carolina 400 an adventure.

For example, two-time CARS Tour champion and current Xfinity Series regular Carson Kvapil almost wanted to believe it was intentional how reckless some drivers were in getting on and off the track the past two days of practice.

“Some people, man, I swear, it’s like they were looking out of the mirror and waited for someone to come down the frontstretch, and now I’m going to pull out,” Kvapil said. “But nah, it wasn’t that that bad, it happens, and we were able to get some pretty clean laps in and get a good feel for it. That was the biggest thing.”

Kvapil spent the second session of Friday practice in the iconic Budweiser No. 8 with Dale Earnhardt Jr. needing to scurry back to Downtown Charlotte to participate in the NASCAR awards banquet as team owner for Xfinity champion Justin Allgaier.

Fortunately, his backup driver was more than capable of getting the car dialed-in over the evening session and will hand it off prepared for qualifying and then a 250 lap feature race.

“I feel like I’m going to tell him that it’s really pretty good,” Kvapil said. “He ran 20 laps on this set of tires and then I ran 25 more maybe. After 50 laps or so, you can’t tell, they have given up so much so I’m going to tell him that it’s not going to feel the same from when he last practiced because we’re going to unload tomorrow on this set.

“I’ll tell him, it’s not going to drive the greatest but if you can make it drive good on these tires, we’ll have speed from the moment we sticker up.”

There is one guy, who of course, doesn’t have to worry about qualifying into the race and that’s Ryan Millington thanks to his CARS Tour race win at Florence in August.

It put him on the pole and allowed him to focus entirely on race runs.

“I feel like maybe I should have concentrated on race runs a little more this year because we’re good,” Millington said. “We’re really good. So, I’m happy and forward to it. We put new tires on at the end of the session and I was really, really happy with how the car drove. We started on the pole and definitely god a good piece for the end of the race, if we can just make it there.”

Millington says he’s going to try hard to not get caught up in the early shuffling of positions because cars with different engine packages will be able to save at different rates. But once it’s go time at the end of the race?

“When it comes time to race, we saved really good at the end of the CARS Tour race, the best that night, and I feel good about our chances.”

There is one guy, who of course, doesn’t have to worry about qualifying into the race and that’s Ryan Millington thanks to his CARS Tour race win at Florence in August.

It put him on the pole and allowed him to focus entirely on race runs.

“I feel like maybe I should have concentrated on race runs a little more this year because we’re good,” Millington said. “We’re really good. So, I’m happy and forward to it. We put new tires on at the end of the session and I was really, really happy with how the car drove. We started on the pole and definitely god a good piece for the end of the race, if we can just make it there.”

Millington says he’s going to try hard to not get caught up in the early shuffling of positions because cars with different engine packages will be able to save at different rates. But once it’s go time at the end of the race?

“When it comes time to race, we saved really good at the end of the CARS Tour race, the best that night, and I feel good about our chances.”

CARS Tour champion Brenden Queen won this race in 2022, his debut race with Lee Pulliam Performance, making this something of a full circle race for the No. 03 group.

He feels good about it all too. He said he and teammate Lanie Buice both have good speed.

“You never know how many of these races you have left in you or you’ll have the opportunity to drive cars like this,” said Queen, who is going ARCA racing next season. “I’m going to pay it all out. There’s no points on the line and we’re here to win another 400 and that’s the least I can do to repay Lee for all he’s done for me.”

Mason Diaz says he likes his car but also thinks the track will be radically different after local divisions and Limited Late Models change the track over the next 24 hours.

“So yesterday we mocked up on a set of tires we brought and the car after that just didn’t really feel good and the first round today, it was just tight,” Diaz said. “I thought we needed to get off these tires and put a set on, and then we didn’t get a lot of clean runs because of traffic, cars getting on and off the track but we got it better now, the repetition really helped.

“But we’re about to have 30 Limited Late Models race, 75 laps I think, and the track is going to rubber up and I don’t know that fine tuning based on today really makes a difference for tomorrow.”

Matt Cox in the Elliott McCumbee car is a perennial contender and winner at Florence and expects to be on Saturday too.

“I think so,” Cox said. “We’ve come close in this one. We’ve won the last four or five Late Model races here and our package is really good. But you have to have a lot of luck in these longer races and hopefully we can put some of that together here at the end too.”