Toyota/SaveMart 350 Race Preview

Infineon Raceway Sonoma -- 06/21/2009

Author: Becca Gladden

Published: Wednesday Jun 17 2009 1:37am

The Sprint Cup series will be taking a different turn this weekend as it heads to Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California, for the Toyota/Save Mart 350, the first of two road courses races in the 2009 season.

Infineon is indeed a road course, where NASCAR drivers must negotiate both right- and left-hand turns. It is 1.99 miles in length with ten turns of varying dimensions, including a challenging series of esses and changes in elevation throughout the course. Sonoma, California, is about 45 minutes south of San Francisco.

The NASCAR Cup series has been racing here once a year since 1989, with a total of 20 races now on the books.

Kyle Busch put Toyota in Victory Lane for the first time here last year, leading 78 of 112 laps and winning by a margin of almost two seconds.

Jeff Gordon, however, leads all drivers by a wide margin in the win column with five victories overall, including three straight from 1998-2000, and two more in 2004 and 2006.

Tony Stewart is the only driver besides Gordon to win more than one Infineon race. Stewart’s won two, both with Joe Gibbs, in 2001 and 2005.
Single race winners here include Busch, Robby Gordon, Mark Martin and Juan Pablo Montoya.

NASCAR road courses always draw attention to the so-called road racing ‘ringers’ – drivers who excel at road courses and may substitute for a Cup series regular or simply race for a part-time team that day. This weekend’s road racers on the entry list include Patrick Carpentier (sitting in for Michael Waltrip), along with Brandon Ash, Boris Said, Ron Fellows, Tom Hubert, Brian Simo, and perhaps a few others. It’s worth noting, however, that a road-course ringer has never won a Cup race at Infineon.

A number of drivers are predicting that Sonoma could end up being a fuel mileage race, making it the third in as many weeks if that is the case.

“Really, Sonoma boils down to luck,” said Jimmie Johnson in his pre-race report. “The rules are so tight and the fuel cells are all the same. The amount of fuel that they pick up is the same. It's really tough to get an advantage. The only thing you can do there is gamble on the number of caution laps. It kind of boils down to how brave are you going to be and how much risk are you willing to take.”

Surprisingly, Clint Bowyer and Juan Pablo Montoya have moved ahead of five-time race winner Jeff Gordon in the average finish category among drivers with more than one start at Sonoma. Montoya, who’s made two starts here, has finished first and sixth with an average finish of 3.5. Bowyer’s average finish is 8.0 in three starts with two-straight fourth-place runs, and Gordon’s is a 9.3 in 16 starts, followed by Ryan Newman, 9.4, and Tony Stewart, 10.0. This season’s three-time winner Mark Martin is next with a 10.1.

Over the course of the last three Cup races here, Kyle Busch leads all drivers in total points accumulated including bonus points, followed by Greg Biffle,
Jeff Burton, Clint Bowyer, Ryan Newman, and Carl Edwards.

The new double-file restart rule may also play a role in the strategy this weekend, as Jeff Gordon notes: “I’m anxious to get through it and see how it works out. I think Pocono and Michigan were two good tracks for NASCAR to try out the double-file restart rule, but I think it’s going to create some havoc here. The drivers may need to rethink how we’ve raced in the past. We’re going to need to figure out how to get through the first set of corners on each double- file restart. But at the same time, we’re going to be battling even harder and more intense for each position, and sometimes that leads to more mistakes and more accidents.”

Current odds for select drivers for the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway:

Kyle Busch +500

Jeff Gordon +600

Tony Stewart +600

Juan Pablo Montoya +700

Marcos Ambrose +800

Robby Gordon +1200

Kurt Busch +1800

Kevin Harvick +2000

All at +2500: Mark Martin, Ron Fellows, Jimmie Johnson, Greg Biffle, Jamie McMurray, Ryan Newman

Please check back before the race for our practice and qualifying update.

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