Gibbs leads troublesome final Cup Series practice of 2025 at Phoenix

Final practice for the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season happened to be one of the most eventful, including for the title contenders.

Ty Gibbs was fastest at 131.868mph (27.300s) with Ryan Blaney second at 131.406mph, Austin Cindric third at 131.377mph, Ryan Preece fourth at 131.353mph and Denny Hamlin (P) fifth at 131.262mph.

Hamlin complained about clutch issues during the session, but it didn’t seem to affect his on-track pace, and the team will look over the car before going into qualifying on Saturday.

Chase Elliott was sixth fastest at 131.147mph, Ross Chastain seventh at 131.137mph, Josh Berry eighth at 131.104mph, William Byron (P) ninth at 131.099mph and Christopher Bell tenth at 130.971mph.

Kyle Larson (P) was 11th fastest on the speed chart after brushing the wall, but it appeared he did no major damage to the car.

Chase Briscoe (P) was the slowest championship contender in 16th. Briscoe's No. 19 Toyota had a left rear tire go down early on and then battled multiple vibration issues. He ran only 24 laps, among the fewest in the session. By contrast, Larson ran 69 laps, Hamlin ran 65, and Byron, 64.

Daniel Suarez had two left rear tires go down, as did AJ Allmendinger – his second resulting in a hard crash for the Kaulig Racing driver. Kyle Busch also lost a tire late in the session. Riley Herbst hit the wall in Turns 1 and 2 because of his own tire issue.

“It’s a good thing that it’s not just us,” Briscoe said. “It’s unfortunate that it’s happening, but at least we’re not on an island by ourselves. I’m sure that James (Small) and everybody on our Bass Pro Shops/Tracker Toyota will figure out what we can do to help manage that on Sunday, but it’s definitely alarming because it wasn’t a great practice for us not to be able to run a lot because of the issues.

“We’ll get to work on it and see what we can do. Fortunately, it is one of those weekends where it is an hour-long practice and you can go change things. If this were one of the normal weekends we had, we’d be in a really tight box. I’m confident we’ll be just fine; we just have to figure out what’s going on.”

Ryan Blaney paced the best consecutive lap averages in the five, 10 and 20 lap counts. Kyle Larson was fastest in the 15 and 25-lap averages, while William Byron was fastest in the 30-lap.

There are 38 teams entered for the season finale at Phoenix Raceway.

UP NEXT: Cup Series qualifying at 5pm ET Saturday.