Coming into the Bucyrus 200 the real winner to begin the practice was Paul Menard, the local racer with the familiar name.  Having grown up on the four mile Road America track in Elkhart Lake, Wi Paul was able to take advantage of this knowledge with top lap times of 136.551 mph 0.673 faster than Owen Kelly.

NNWS 2 time WI winner (at Milwaukee) could only muster a 5^th best. and tore out a front side panel in the pee gravel around corner 8.   Not the practice start Carl wanted. Every driver I watched had an issue with corner 5 except for Menard which is both a blessing and a curse, I have a feeling their will be a lot of Yellow flag’s flying around the course.  I do hope they make the flag’s more of the area and not full track yellows that would kill the race in my mind.

After the practice laps this morning the Menards 98 car was the fastest car based on time.  Watching the drivers I was suprised at how long it was taking the guys to get adjusted to the course.  Guy's like  Carl who went into the dirt twice were commenting on how hard it was to get adjusted to this course, what this tells me is that the guys who are going to be flying back and forth between the two series races here for Nationwide and Sanoma for the Sprint are going to have an issue because now they do not get the Saturday practice time to work out the kinks.  One of the best interview questions this morning was to Carl Edwards on what he thought of thr course?  "It is awesome!"  "Beautiful track, and area, now I need to stop looking around at it and learn to drive it."

Brad Keselowski also liked the track.  "I love this place, it will be great to race it."  Just like Carl I am hoping to learn from Paul by following him around the track all day today."

It is great to see the Bucyrus 200 presented by Menards at such a legendary track and I look forward to a great race....More on Saturday.

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