FanHouse's Geoffrey Miller is on-location at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for Sunday's 15th Running of the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard.

Hendrick Motorsports is running strong at Indianapolis.

Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon put their Chevrolets away Friday afternoon at the Brickyard with the Top-2 speeds overall of both Friday practices in preparation for Saturday's run for the pole.

In the heat of the afternoon, Johnson and Gordon were the only two drivers to overtake the 180 mph mark, with Johnson setting the pace with a lap of 180.047mph and Gordon following closely behind at 180.007 mph.

Elliott Sadler in his No. 19 Dodge paced the first practice session with a lap of 179.190mph.

There was just one incident in the two afternoon practice sessions as Sam Hornish Jr. -- more known at Indy for his 2006 Indianapolis 500 victory -- looped his No. 77 in the short chute between turns 1 & 2 without any damage.


Friday's sessions were run under the afternoon sun between the hours of 2-4:30pm/ET which will be great for race preparation, but qualifying will be starting Saturday morning at 10:10am/ET and will stretch to nearly 1:00pm/ET.

In all reality, its the worst possible time to run a qualifying session because the drivers going out first will have a decided advantage over the teams scheduled to take the track after about 11:00am/ET as the temperature will rise significantly during that time.

Stewart Admits to Shoving USAC Official

As we talked about early on Friday, Tony Stewart was involved in an altercation Thursday night at O'Reilly Raceway Park during a USAC event that he was attending as a team owner.

Well, this afternoon, Stewart admitted to the incident in which he shoved a USAC official after his team car wasn't allowed to rejoin the race to the NASCAR Scene:

"When you're sitting there and you've got your corporate sponsors there and you've got a car on the race track and it's sitting on pit lane and they can't get a push truck to it, you're supporting your guys and your team that worked hard on that car trying to get it back out," he said in explaining his role in the altercation.

I don't know if I buy that explanation from Ol' Smoke.

I understand being frustrated, and I understand being upset. But that should never, ever result in physical contact -- as it has multiple times with Tony.

It is what it is, I suppose, and there's nothing we can do about it now. But really, when is Tony going to learn that it's not OK to put your hands on someone else in a violent manner?