By Micah Roberts
Posted 08/11/2012 at 02:52 PM

Because of rain eliminating one of the Watkins Glen practices on Friday, the teams got a Saturday morning bonus of 86 additional minutes of track time squeezed in before qualifying. Kyle Busch used the extra time to fine tune his set-up and laid down the fastest lap of 127.458 in the final of his 22 laps run. ***** Busch swept the 2008 road course season and has a 9.3 average finish at Watkins Glen that includes a third-place finish last season. Kyle’s top speed was over 2 mph faster than the top speed his brother Kurt set Friday in the only practice session run. Kurt Busch finished with the 20th fast lap in this practice. ***** Juan Pablo Montoya had the second fastest lap (127.446) of the session followed by Carl Edwards, Marcos Ambrose and Martin Truex Jr. ***** For Edwards, the third fastest lap has to be encouraging considering he’s always run well at Watkins Glen and is outside looking in for the final Chase position with five races remaining. He’s got an 8.7 average finish at the Glen with a career best of third in 2009. He’s finished 12th or better in his last six starts on the road course. Should he win this week, he will pass Jeff Gordon in the Chase standings by virtue of most points among drivers with one win. ***** The bad news for Edwards is that Gordon looks to have a car ideally set-up for this week. Gordon finished with the sixth fastest lap during the Saturday morning practice session. Prior to his sixth-place finish at Sonoma in June, Gordon tested this car at Road Atlanta and said most of the notes from that test session were geared more towards Watkins Glen because of similarities with the long straights. Between the two solid practice sessions for Gordon, he looks like he’ll be one of the drivers to beat on Sunday. ***** Jimmie Johnson had the seventh fastest lap of the session using the same chassis that won with at Sonoma in 2010. Johnson captured his fast lap in the final of his 15 laps on the morning. He was one of two drivers to run at least 10-consecutive laps with an average speed 2.5 mph faster than Clint Bowyer, the other driver to run 10 straight laps. ***** Bowyer, the Sonoma winner from June, finished with the 15th fastest lap. Five-time Watkins Glen winner Tony Stewart had the 13th fastest lap and 2006 winner Kevin Harvick was ninth fastest.