Martin Truex Jr. didn't start off his day at Sonoma Raceway out front. But by the time the Toyota/Save Mart 350 ended on Sunday, he was so much faster everyone else looked like they were running down a cylinder. How this NASCAR Cup Series race played out in wine country is a microcosm of where the playoff picture stands entering the sport's lone off week this season.
Truex, methodically worked his way through the field, passing teammate Denny Hamlin on lap 33 and looking like he was poised to pull away. That's until a caution on lap 51 for an errant tire gave several cars in the field a lucky break, trapping Truex back in traffic during the middle of a green-flag pit cycle. A second one with 19 laps remaining resulted in Chase Elliott using strategy to catapult to the front.
The Hendrick Motorsports star took a gamble, running old tires in hopes a victory would cut off some summer postseason drama. For a while, the No. 9 car had pace but just like after the first caution, Truex sliced through traffic, passed Elliott and then drove away with relative ease.
The victory was the fourth for Truex at Sonoma, most among active drivers, and vaulted him into the points lead for the first time this year. It's an exclamation point for Toyota officially catching up to Hendrick Motorsports and Chevrolet this season: Camrys have won three of the last six races and hit the break with five of their full-time drivers in playoff position (only rookie Ty Gibbs is falling short).
HMS, just like at Sonoma, has had bursts of time out front and won one race over the past two months -- William Byron's checkered flag at Darlington Raceway. But Byron and Kyle Larson own all of the organization's five wins this season. Elliott and Alex Bowman have missed a total of 10 races between them, leading just 87 laps in what could be a win-or-else postseason scenario.
Toyota's countered that with consistency across the board, even extending their speed to the 23XI Racing team of Tyler Reddick and Bubba Wallace. If anyone's the wild card to challenge the rising Toyota contingent, it might be Kyle Busch. The 38-year-old appears rejuvenated, using a combination of short-pitting, strategy, and speed at Sonoma to slip into second, his fifth top-2 finish this season. He had just three during all of 2022, his last with Toyota before finding his footing with Chevrolet and Richard Childress Racing.
"This team is really stringing together some good runs, so I don't know if I want an off week," Busch said. "I'm just really proud of the guys on this team, the communication, and the way they are able to go to work, work through some of our issues and try to improve on what I need to be able to feel in a race car and pull out finishes like the one we had today. If we can keep doing those things, we will be a force for the championship."
For now, all roads run first through Joe Gibbs Racing and Truex, riding high on his rebuild after a winless 2022.
"There's a lot to it," he said of the recent success. "It's really hard to explain it. Tons of hard work in the offseason from every angle on road courses, on short tracks, really on everything."
It's all paying off.
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Green: Chris Buescher. Fourth at Sonoma, Buescher is now up to seven straight top-10 finishes on road courses. That right-turn prowess has helped elevate the RFK Racing veteran to 11th in points, a career high for him this late in the season.
Yellow: Michael McDowell. The 2021 Daytona 500 winner had the best shot to unseat Truex and earn a second career Cup victory. Unfortunately, a slow pit stop after the second and final caution knocked him too far outside the top 10 to climb back up (seventh), angering Ryan Blaney in the process after some late-race contact. But there's a silver lining to his summer vacation -- back-to-back top 10s for the first time all year leave him just 14 points outside playoff position.
Red: Andy Lally. The 2011 NASCAR Rookie of the Year had high hopes after landing a rare one-off with Rick Ware Racing as the lone "road course ringer" in the field. It never panned out though -- Lally qualified a distant 33rd and couldn't find speed with the Next Gen, finishing 35th in a 36-car field.
Speeding Ticket: Stage racing. Sonoma was the second race of a new experiment by NASCAR this season: removing mandatory cautions for stage breaks at road courses and just awarding those bonuses after a certain number of laps. What they got was a clean, quick race with just two caution flags over the 110-lap event.
Crew chiefs responded aggressively, playing out all sorts of strategy with no assurance a yellow flag would save them. Drivers went all out knowing falling behind early could mean no chance to make up the difference. It was… refreshingly efficient and clean, with any in-race boredom more the result of the Next Gen chassis than the way in which the race was structured.
Let's hope NASCAR takes the hint and applies "no stage breaks" to all tracks beginning in 2024.
Oops!
Not many choices this week in a clean race so we'll go with a rare mistake by Denny Hamlin, bouncing himself off not one but two walls in the only major wreck of the day at Sonoma.
Trouble for Denny Hamlin. #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/EjgBIfDYmI
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) June 11, 2023
"I was really close behind the No. 24," Hamlin said. "I couldn't really see where I was going and I went to turn left to try and peek underneath of them and the wall was there."
That left the pole-sitter dead last after leading 33 laps early in the event.
