Cup Series Championship Practice is in the books, and it did not go entirely the way the points leader would have wanted.

Chase Briscoe topped Friday practice at Homestead-Miami Speedway, turning a lap of 32.680 seconds at 165.238 mph in the lone 50-minute Cup Series session. Austin Cindric was second at 32.753, and the two championship challengers were right behind him. Denny Hamlin was third at 32.790, and Christopher Bell was fourth at 32.797. Ryan Blaney rounded out the top five.

That is a good look for Hamlin and Bell, and a worrying one for the man they are chasing. Kyle Larson was 10th fastest at 32.948, more than a quarter of a second off Briscoe. Larson brushed the outside wall multiple times during the session. He kept going, and the No. 5 team did not have to go to a backup car, but that is not how a points leader wants to start a championship weekend.

That being said, Larson does not need to be fast on Friday to win this championship. He leads Bell by 67 points and Hamlin by 70, and a 28th-place finish on Sunday is enough to lock up his third Cup Series title, his second in a row, no matter what Bell or Hamlin do. Practice speed is a nice thing to have. It is not a requirement for Larson this weekend, and Hendrick knows it.

Still, the wall contact matters, because Homestead punishes mistakes. This is a 1.5-mile track where the fast line is right up against the wall, and Larson found it the hard way, more than once. If he does that on Sunday, in traffic, with a championship on the line, it will cost him a lot more than a practice lap.

Hamlin and Bell, on the other hand, looked like drivers who know exactly what they need to do. Hamlin was the fastest championship contender in third, and Bell was right behind him in fourth, just seven thousandths of a second back. Hamlin ran 55 laps in the session, Bell ran 62, the most of any driver in the top five, and both of them were fast on the long run too. Bell was third on the 10-lap average chart at 161.300 mph, and Hamlin was seventh at 160.931 mph. They are not just fast for one lap. They have race pace, and that is what Sunday will come down to.

Blaney is the other driver to watch from practice. He was fifth on a single lap, and he topped the 10-lap average chart at 161.376 mph. Briscoe was second on the 10-lap average, Bell third, and Ty Gibbs fourth. Blaney is not racing for a championship on Sunday, but he might be racing for a win, and a fast Blaney car in front of the championship three is a problem for all of them.

Cindric in second is the first name. He has had a quiet year by Penske standards, but he was 0.073 seconds off Briscoe and sixth on the 10-lap average. Daniel Suarez was sixth on a single lap at 32.827, and Michael McDowell was ninth at 32.922. McDowell in the top 10 in a Spire car is a good run, and Suarez has been fast at Homestead before. Ty Gibbs was seventh, and his JGR Toyota looked quick on the long run too, fourth on the 10-lap average.

Start with the Hendrick cars not named Larson. William Byron was 12th on a single lap, and 21st on the 10-lap average. Chase Elliott was 19th on a single lap, and 24th on the 10-lap average. Alex Bowman was 22nd. That is a rough practice for Hendrick, and it makes Larson's wall trouble look like part of a bigger story, not just one driver pushing too hard.

Tyler Reddick is the weird one. He was 20th on a single lap at 33.080, which looks slow, but he was fifth on the 10-lap average at 161.222 mph. That is a car that does not have one-lap speed yet, but has long-run pace, and Reddick ran 69 laps, more than anyone else in the field. He also had a moment at the very end of practice, driving into the back of Zane Smith as both were coming to pit lane in the closing seconds. No harm done, as far as anyone could tell, but it was a sloppy way to end a session for a driver who needs a clean weekend.

Shane van Gisbergen was 36th, Connor Zilisch was 33rd in his Cup debut weekend at Homestead, and Corey Heim was 14th on a single lap in the 23XI car. Heim was 16th on the 10-lap average, which is solid for a driver who does not run Cup full time.

Briscoe is fast, Cindric is fast, and the two men chasing Larson are fast. Larson is 10th, 12th on the long run, and he has already found the wall twice. He still only needs nine points, and that has not changed. But if Hamlin and Bell keep this pace into qualifying and the race, Larson might have to earn those nine points the hard way, and do it without touching the wall again.