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The series returns from a Father's Day
off-weekend and heads west to California's scenic wine country
for the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway (Sunday, June 23,
at 3 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). And while
the season's four-time winner Kyle Busch and three-time victors
Martin Truex Jr. and Brad Keselowski have been collecting
trophies left and right, the season's first true test of
left-and-right may be just what some of the other consensus
championship contenders need to score that first win of 2019.
Joe Gibbs Racing driver Martin Truex Jr. arrives in Northern
California as the defending race winner and his JGR teammate
Kyle Busch has a pair of wins at the track as well. But there
are four other drivers ranked among the NASCAR Playoff's top 16
who have won at Sonoma before, still looking for this year's
first sip of winner's wine this weekend.
Four former Sonoma winners -- Kevin Harvick, Clint Bowyer, Kurt
Busch and Jimmie Johnson -- are all winless on the season but
ranked inside the top 16 arriving in California. By their
standards, a win this week isn't just do-able -- it's overdue.
Harvick won at Sonoma in 2017 and was runner-up to Truex last
year. The driver of the No. 4 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford Mustang
earned eight wins a year ago in his valiant challenge for the
2018 title and had scored five trophies by Father's Day. But
this season, Harvick shows up in his native California eager and
highly motivated to earn his first victory of the season and
restore his championship mojo.
Harvick has finished in the top 10 or better in four of the last
five Sonoma races. His Stewart-Haas Racing teammate Clint Bowyer
boasts the same favorable statistic -- in fact the 2012 Sonoma
winner was third last year, runner-up in 2017 and third in 2015.
His eight top-five finishes are most in the field this week.
Kurt Busch, who drives for Chip Ganassi Racing, won at Sonoma in
2011 and has finished in the top 10 in seven of the last eight
races there -- including runner-up to his younger brother Kyle
in 2015.
Perhaps no driver in the top 16 is more motivated to sip a glass
of winner's wine and hoist a trophy then seven-time series
champion Jimmie Johnson, who is looking for his first victory in
more than two seasons. He won at Sonoma in 2010 and had top 10s
in 2014 and 2015.
It's an interesting evolution for road racing in NASCAR. In the
early days of the sport, drivers tended to be all in or way off
when it came to the non-oval venues. Some certainly adapted well
to the road-course challenges, others worked hard at it and even
attended Bob Bondurant race schools to bone up. Some had
previous road-course experience in other series.
Ricky Rudd, who always liked road-course racing, won the very
first Sonoma race in 1989 and NASCAR Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace
-- another who took this form of racing well -- won the next
year. Both drivers won twice at Sonoma over their careers. Ernie
Irvan, another Californian, scored two wins at Sonoma in the
early 1990s and NASCAR Hall of Famer Mark Martin won at Sonoma
in 1997.
Even in the years thereafter, renowned road racers such as Robby
Gordon (2003) and Juan Pablo Montoya (2007) scored Sonoma
trophies and set the bar. And new NASCAR Hall of Famer Jeff
Gordon, who was born minutes away from the Sonoma course, also
took to that brand of competition, winning a track record five
times in his career -- including three consecutive titles from
1998-2000.
But as the sport evolved and the championship format changed --
essentially shortening the regular season by 10 races to make
way for the Playoffs -- it became essential for all Monster
Energy Series drivers to shift their road-course game into a
higher gear.
At the series' other traditional road-course track, the historic
Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International, there have been five
different winners in the last five races from A.J. Allmendinger
in 2014 (his first series victory) to first-time road course
winners Joey Logano in 2015, Denny Hamlin in 2016 and Chase
Elliott in 2018. Ryan Blaney scored his first non-oval series
win in last year's debut of the Charlotte ROVAL -- a hybrid
course of infield turns and the Charlotte Motor Speedway
banking.
The unique challenges presented by Sonoma's road course,
including the reintroduction of the famed "Carousel" turn,
present a prime opportunity for some of the sport's biggest
names and championship hopefuls to break into the Busch-Truex-Keselowski
"big winners" party this season. And it makes this week's stop
even more crucial in the championship setting.
-- By Holly Cain, NASCAR Wire Service. Special to Field Level
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