Martin Truex Jr. appeared to pick up where he left off last spring at Kansas Speedway by pacing the field in the first Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice Friday morning.

The No. 78 Toyota has been the class of the field on mile-and-a-half tracks for over a year and Truex laid down a lap of 185.065 mph to best Ryan Blaney (184.932 mph), and teammate Erik Jones (184.596 mph) in the 55-minute session.

Truex is looking for redemption after he dominated the Go Bowling 400 last year by leading 172 of 267 laps. However, Truex finished 14th after a pit stop with 54 laps to go took away his lead because a bracket had become wedged between the wheel and the hub.

Matt Kenseth was fourth fastest at 184.533 mph with Kevin Harvick rounding out the top five at 184.458 mph. The rest of the top 10 were Dale Earnhardt Jr. (184.451 mph), Kyle Larson (184.439 mph), Kyle Busch (184.344 mph), Trevor Bayne (184.244 mph), and Chase Elliott (184.212 mph).

There were two incidents during the session.

With less than 15 minutes to go in the session, rookie Erik Jones got loose off Turn 4 and spun through the infield grass. Fortunately, Jones avoided contact and the car suffered minor damage.

“I was pretty loose before that and was getting looser as the run went,” Jones said. “Got a little bit loose through (Turns) 3 and 4 and started trying to chase it and eventually just had to give up on it and spun out. Luckily, we don’t really have any damage – little bit of side skirt damage, we’ll get that fixed up and be just fine here for the second practice.”

The second incident came inside the final four minutes when Michael McDowell blew and engine going into Turn 1.