Matt Kenseth made the first big move of NASCAR’s “Silly Season”. What does this mean for the rest of the 2012 free agents?
Denny Hamlin, Carl Edwards, Matt Kenseth and Ryan Newman look ahead to this week’s race at Kentucky.
No matter the starting spot, Tony Stewart seems to flourish on road courses. The Toyota/Save Mart 350k NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race Sunday at the road course in Sonoma, Calif., was no different, as Stewart rallied from his 24th-place starting spot to finish a strong second to race winner Clint Bowyer.
“Compared to where we were on Friday and Saturday, I think we had an awesome day today, especially being able to just drive through the field like we did,” said Stewart, a winner of seven road-course races who has nine top-10 finishes in 14 career Sprint Cup starts at Sonoma, including three second-place finishes. “We had those two long runs there, and that let us race these guys one-on-one. We got the caution at the end when we needed it, just didn’t have enough laps left. If we had another lap or two, we were going to make it interesting.”
An unlucky break during a routine pit stop on lap 72 actually proved lucky for the No. 14 Office Depot/Mobil 1 team of Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR), when after not getting the fuel cell entirely full, a caution period on lap 83 allowed Stewart to pit for fuel and four fresh tires.
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Clint Bowyer’s victory in Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma was a surprise to the driver who chased him for more than 20 laps — Kurt Busch — but in retrospect, history may have been on Bowyer’s side.
[Gallery not found]“I just kept thinking, ‘He’s a dirt Late Model racer from the Midwest — there’s no way he can be able to run the road course,’ but he did,” said Busch, who finished third despite hitting a tire barrier in Turn 11 at the 1.99-mile track and breaking the panhard bar on his No. 51 Chevrolet.
With Busch’s car damaged and vulnerable to a pass during a green-white-checkered-flag finish that took the event two laps beyond its scheduled 110 laps, Bowyer held off charging Tony Stewart to claim his first victory of the season and the sixth of his career.
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Nelson Piquet Jr. enjoyed a lot of firsts during the NASCAR Nationwide series Sargento 200 race weekend at Road America.
A regular in the NASCAR Camping World Truck series, Piquet Jr. used his first career pole and laps led to earn his very first NASCAR national series win on the Wisconsin road course. In his third career NASCAR Nationwide start, the native of Brazil drove a flawless final 17 laps with the lead, earning a 2.258-second victory over runner-up Michael McDowell. He led a race-high 19 laps and also becomes the first Brazilian to win a NASCAR national series race.
“It’s difficult to put into words what I’m feeling,” Piquet Jr. said. “I think we had a great week since the first practice. I learned the track quite quickly and the team helped me out quite a bit.”
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JIMMIE JOHNSON, NO. 48 LOWE’S CHEVROLET – QUALIFIED THIRD
HOW GOOD WAS THAT LAP?
“I don’t’ think it was all that good. Hopefully, it will hold up. Since the first lap on track just a lot of slipping and sliding. I was shocked to hear I was on top of the board in practice earlier today. I wasn’t really proud of the lap in the first turn. I just think there is low grip and low speeds and the car really doesn’t take a really good set and get into the track which is tough for a driver to know how good the lap is. I really hope that it’s a great lap and hope that it is good enough for the pole, but I just don’t know.”
IS THAT A GOOD SIGN FOR SUNDAY?
“The more difficult they are to drive the better the racing is going to be. I think that is a good sign come race time.”
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YOU WON THE POLE LAST WEEK AT MICHIGAN AT OVER 200 MPH, TODAY YOU WIN THE POLE AT UNDER 100 MPH. YOU CAN DO JUST ABOUT ANYTHING OUT THERE AT JUST ABOUT ANY SPEED. “Now that I have a taste for it I think Kentucky will be about 175 mph and I will be gunning for that as well. I am really thrilled for today. I put a lot of effort into this race and everybody at Richard Petty Motorsports and the whole Stanley team have been rock solid behind me for the road course program. Ford Racing has done a lot of hard work here too and we brought a brand new hot rod for this race and it is even better than what we had here last year. I am glad we could convert the effort into a great result. It is only one lap and we have to do a lot more on Sunday but at least we can go home and say we had the fastest car. I was more nervous running 90 mph than I was running 200. You just have to be really precise with your marks and very aggressive and carry momentum through these tight corners.”
RICHARD, TALK A LITTLE ABOUT WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE UP HERE THE SECOND WEEK IN A ROW WITH MARCOS AND AT SUCH A DIFFERENT TRACK. RICHARD PETTY — “Well, winning this week was not as unexpected as what last week was. That, I tried to tell him and I didn’t want to put any pressure on him for when he did come out here. I guess everything went good. Anytime you can sit on the pole it is good but the big deal now is getting ready for the race. I think we won the race here with Richard Petty Motorsports a couple three years ago, so some of the guys know how to win here also. We have a driver we think that gave one of them away out here so it is time he got one back for us.”
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While Marcos Ambrose is clearly the favorite at this weekend’s road course event, Sporting News’ Thomas van der Voort and Steven Levine say he’s far more than a one-trick pony.
Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick, Jeff Gordon and Matt Kenseth look ahead to the challenges of road course racing at Sonoma
Once upon a time, Jeff Gordon owned Sonoma’s road course, winning five times, including three victories in a row between 1998 and 2000.
Times – along with the NASCAR Sprint Cup car and race procedures – have changed.
Now, Gordon, a native of the nearby community of Vallejo, calls the 1.99-mile track “a challenge.”
His last victory came in 2006 before the introduction of the current car. “The new Chevy Impala came along and it changed everything,” he said. “We’re not able to shift things (weight) around as much as we used to. This car doesn’t change direction as much. It made it a little more challenging to drive and it’s really leveled the playing field.”
The competition, Gordon agreed, also is deeper. The series’ two road races, at Sonoma on Sunday and in August at Watkins Glen International, once were an afterthought for many teams. No longer.
“When I started, maybe half the field took short track cars to the road course and adapted to it,” said Gordon. “Now, pretty much every car is a special car for a road course.”
Then came double-file restarts. The right line for one corner can put a driver in the wrong line for the next.
“You have to push and shove a lot more to get that position after a restart,” he said, explaining why Sunday’s race could resemble a short track scrum at Martinsville Speedway. “After a restart, that’s nowadays where the excitement comes on the road course.”
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