With the opening day of the Aaron's 499 weekend set aside solely for practice with Coors Light Pole qualifying not scheduled until Saturday the Sprint Cup teams were straight to work on their race set-ups at the 2.66-mile Talladega Superspeedway.
After using the new generation chassis during last October's UAW-Ford 500 the majority of the 46 teams in attendance this weekend at least had a baseline set-up to work from with everybody hoping that the extra experience will make for a better race on Sunday than we saw at the tail end of last season.
Fastest out of blocks with a best lap time of 48.873-seconds (195.936mph) was Kevin Harvick in the #29 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet followed by Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Denny Hamlin and Tony Stewart. Ford and Dodge were also represented in the top five thanks to Roush-Fenway Racing's Carl Edwards and
Daytona 500 winner Ryan Newman.
In a very un-NASCAR like fashion the field was fairly well spread out on the timesheets with Kasey Kahne more than half a second slower than Harvick despite being sixth fastest overall. Harvick's RCR teammate and current Sprint Cup points leader Jeff Burton was seventh fastest with Phoenix winner Jimmie Johnson eighth, DEI's rookie Regan Smith an impressive ninth and Clint Bowyer rounding out the top ten in the third RCR entry.
PJ Jones, substituting for Robby Gordon, was 19th fastest with last year's double Talladega winner Jeff Gordon only 23rd and Dale Earnhardt Jr 28th. Ken Schrader, drafted in to the #70 Haas CNC Racing team this weekend in the continued absence of BAM Racing, was 39th fastest but was critically among the fastest eight of the eleven non guaranteed drivers attempting to make Sunday's race.
![Kevin Harvick tests Goodyear rubber on the #29 CoT Chevrolet [pic credit: Atlanta Motor Speedway]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/368405.jpg)
