- Wednesday saw NASCAR teams take to the 1.5-mile quad-oval at Charlotte Motor Speedway for a full day of testing.  New ways to cool the race cars resulted in substantially reduced speeds.  Ryan Blaney was fastest overall with a lap at 173.193 mph.  He was two-hundredths of a second faster than former teammate Brad Keselowski.  William Byron was third fastest, then Erik Jones and GMS Racing's Ty Dillon.  These speeds are more akin to when NASCAR experimented with 400 horsepower output for the All-Star Race back in 2018.

There were a couple of incidents during the testing.  10 minutes into Wednesday's action, Austin Dillon spun out and hit the wall hard.  The team scooped the car up onto a truck, transported it back to Welcome, N.C., repaired it, drove it back to Concord and got back on-track before the testing completed.  Austin was ok and was able to drive again when the car was repaired.  NASCAR believes that the car performed well in the crash, as it was supposed to.

Denny Hamlin also spun his Toyota in turn 4 during the session.  He was able to avoid the wall and drove away.

- Michael Shank Racing with Curb-Agajanian announced Thursday morning that current ABB FIA Formula E world champion Nyck de Vries will join the team for his first INDYCAR test session Dec. 6 at Sebring International Raceway.

"With his teammate Liam Lawson bringing tough competition, Vips’ average season might leave some people questioning whether he is the real deal. However, I think Vips’ sophomore year could be his break-out season. He has four other F2 podiums, three in 2021 and one last season while driving in relief of Sean Gelael.

"With the modicum of success that Vips has enjoyed there is a good chance that Estonia will be cheering him onto the F1 grid, making it the 42nd nation represented on the grid." - Alex Gallacher is fairly high on the possibility that Juri Vips could make it to Formula 1 in the near future.