By Micah Roberts
Posted 06/01/2012 at 01:52 PM

Mark Martin led the way with the fastest lap in Friday’s first of two practice sessions at Dover International Speedway in preparation for Sunday’s FedEx 400. The fast lap of 159.200 mph came of the last lap of the 21 ran by Martin during the 85-minute session, which was delayed by about five minutes due to rain. ********** Martin is a four-time winner at Dover -- the last coming in 2004 -- and has showed a tremendous amount of consistency over the last decade on the track that includes two runner-up finishes in his last five starts. ************* Denny Hamlin, with the FedEx sponsor on his side-panel, put down the second fastest (158.926) early in the session on his first lap run and was the fastest until Martin’s final run. Hamlin has a 20.7 average finish over his career at Dover with a best of fourth-place -- which he has accomplished twice, the last coming in the spring of 2010. ************ Martin Truex Jr. was third fastest (158.527) capturing his top speed on the final of his 28 laps run. The speed obtained is encouraging for Truex Jr. because Dover is the one place he always hopes to run well at. With the track being only 129 miles from his hometown of Mayetta, NJ, he’ll have hundreds of friends and family in attendance for Sunday’s race. It’s also the site of his only career Cup win. *************** Rounding out the top-5 speeds were two former multiple Dover race winners, Kyle Busch (158.444) and Greg Biffle (158.367). Busch won in 2008 and 2010 and has compiled a 13.3 average finish continuing his trend of always running well on any concrete surface in any series. Busch has finished no worse than 11th since the April 14th event at Texas is on a run of four straight top-5 finishes and five straight top-10’s. ************* Biffle hasn’t had a top-5 at Dover since finishing third in 2009, but it’s apparent by his teams’ performance that he may get to a plateau they once were at Dover. From 2005-2009, Biffle accumulated two wins, six top-5’s and eight top-10’s in a span of nine races. **************** Six-time Dover winner Jimmie Johnson finished with 13th fastest lap while last years spring winner, Matt Kenseth, was 12th quickest. *************** Only three drivers ran at least 10-consecutive laps with Paul Menard topping the list with the fastest average. The small amount of consecutive laps run is usually an indicator that most of the teams were searching for individual lap speeds for qualifying. However, the amount of laps run by most of the teams also suggest that there were plenty of mock-race runs as well. Jeff Gordon ran the most laps (48) of the session as the No. 24 team continues to search for answers. **************** These practice schedules have to be frustrating for all the teams. By having qualifying as their last time on the track, it makes the teams work a lot harder in the two practice sessions and do too many change-overs into a qualifying set-up that is only needed for one lap. ************* While it’s always nice to start up front, this process de-values qualifying because there is no points gained from starting up front as opposed to being their best in race conditions where points all the points are gained on race day. On a normal practice schedule where the team uses the first practice in qualifying trim, then qualifies, they have the final two practices to get their race set-up right and are ready for race day with little altering needed. *************** In a schedule like we have this week at Dover, a team may get their perfect set-up down, but then have to change it all over for a qualifying set-up. After that one measly lap is run, they have to break it all down again and hope they can recreate what they had the day prior when their set-up was perfect. ************** Expect more 10 lap averages to be available in Friday’s final 90-minute session set to begin at 2:45 pm (ET). Saturday’s qualifying begins at 12:10 pm (ET).