Low grip still an issue at Atlanta

Carl Edwards, the most recent winner at the track, emerged fastest from the final practice session, which was held around the time the race is set to start.

But despite being quicker than everyone, the Roush Fenway driver admitted grip levels were similar to those of a year ago. Many drivers were critical of Goodyear's tyre selection for that event, which was the first time the new specification of Cup car had raced at Atlanta.

"They're pretty tricky, but I'd say it's about the same as a year ago, they're not much different," Edwards said when asked about the grip available from the tyres.

"I was slipping and sliding quite a bit, but at least it's controllable. It's not like you slip a little bit and you wreck it. You can drive this thing around all sorts of sideways right now and still keep control.

"None of it's easy, but, to me, this is better than racing at a place like Charlotte, where everything is so locked down and you can't move around at all. This is way safer than that."

Reigning champion Jimmie Johnson, a three-time winner at the track, was only 17th fastest in the final practice session and voiced his frustration about the lack of grip.

"I don't know if we're going to make the cars really drive better here," said Johnson. "And I assume through the tyre test they've found the best one and put it on the car, but the cars don't drive all that well here.

"Throughout the day, once we worked on it, we made our car much better. So we could have just been off. But I think everybody, when they left pit road the first time and went through (Turns) 3 and 4 coming to the green on their qualifying lap, it was like 'what's going on?'

"Nobody expected the cars to drive that poorly."

Goodyear has changed its tyre selection for Atlanta twice in as many visits to the mile-and-a-half oval since last year's spring event.