Road work ahead
Truex hopes Sonoma brings more success
Martin Truex Jr.’s win three weeks ago at Pocono Raceway served notice that this year’s points battle might be more than a two-man showdown between Kyle Busch and Kevin Harvick.
Now the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series champion is back in California at Sonoma Raceway, the 1.99-mile road course where he has enjoyed plenty of success.
Truex won there in 2013 and led several laps of last year’s race before engine trouble sidelined him with a disappointing finish. The 37-year-old Furniture Row Racing driver enjoys switching to road courses — as opposed to the usual steady diet of ovals — and hopes it can help him vault closer to Busch and Harvick in the points standings.
“Anytime you enjoy a place and have some success, it seems like the success just comes more and more, because you really enjoy it and focus in on it,” Truex said. “For me, I just like it here. It’s become a good track for me.”
Truex is currently sixth in the standings with 506 points, just behind Brad Keselowski (514) and Clint Bowyer (510). Busch (664), Harvick (589) and Joey Logano (566) are at the top.
Truex already has qualified for the playoffs because of his two victories — he won the March 18 race at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California — so now his team is trying to figure out how to be more consistent. The past two races have been a good microcosm of the up-and-down season. One week after winning at Pocono, Truex finished 18th at Michigan International Speedway. The series was off last weekend.
“We’d like to just get a little more consistent,” Truex said. “We’ve had a few bad races throughout the season. We’ve been really fast — we’ve got
“Anytime you enjoy a place and have some success, it seems like the success just comes more and more, because you really enjoy it and focus in on it. For me, I just like it here. It’s become a good track for me.”
— MARTIN TRUEX JR.
those two wins. But we haven’t had as many stage points. Last year we did a good job at winning stages and gathering a lot of points for the playoffs. That’s something we’ve lacked this year and something we’re focused on.”
Truex said he doesn’t expect Busch or Harvick to be any less successful at Sonoma because of the switch to a road course. The two have combined to win nine of 15 races so far this season.
“If you look at it, those guys are really good on road courses as well,” Truex said. “They’ve got good numbers here.”
Truex believes his team isn’t far off from where it was last season, when he won eight races and captured his first championship. He praised both Busch and Harvick for great seasons and said his team’s working to figure out how to match them.
“We’re off a tick from where we were, and those guys are just a tick better,” Truex said.
He hopes being back at Sonoma — and remembering how good his car was on the course last year before the engine trouble struck — can be a spark to push his team forward.
“We had a really good shot at winning last year,” Truex said, “and it really stung for us.”
Not this year
NASCAR is shelving the aerodynamics package used last month in the AllStar Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway for the rest of the season.
The drafting package, which included aero ducts, a higher spoiler, restrictor plates and an older splitter in an attempt to promote passing and tight competition, will not be used again this year as the ruling body contemplates future changes. The current package will be used for the final 21 races of the season.
Steve O’Donnell, a NASCAR executive vice president and its chief racing development officer, told NASCAR. com this week there has been “a lot of detailed conversations” and officials came to the conclusion “the best thing to do was to put some additional effort into some potential tweaks and focus on 2019.”
Teams balked at the package being used again this year because of the costs associated with switching back and forth because it wouldn’t work at every track, and drivers have been against it. The All-Star Race produced 38 green-flag passes for the lead compared to zero the previous year, and fans seemed to like it.