San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Larson again takes pole in quest for win at Sonoma
Just as he did last year, Kyle Larson beat 37 other NASCAR drivers Saturday to the pole position in Sunday’s Toyota/ SaveMart 350.
It’s great to start from the front row on the 1.99-mile road course at Sonoma Raceway. But how much exactly is the pole position worth?
For example, Larson won it last year and finished 26th in the race.
In 2015 he set the track qualifying record at 96.568 mph in the first round. But he dropped to fourth in the final qualifying session and finished the race in 15th place.
In fact, none of the last 13 pole-sitters has won the race. Overall in the 29 NASCAR Cup races in Wine Country, the only drivers to win both were Jeff Gordon (1998, ’99 and ’04), Ernie Irvan (’94) and Mark Martin (’97). In other words,
you practically have to be a Hall of Famer to pull off the feat.
Larson, a 25-year-old driver from Elk Grove (Sacramento County), posted a fast lap of 94.597 miles per hour in the second round. His time of 75.732 seconds in the No. 42 Chevrolet for Chip Ganassi Racing was seven-tenths of a second better than his firstround time.
The times during the first session were slowed in part by an oil spill caused by an engine problem for Bill Kann in the late stages of the K&N Pro Series West qualifying. Track attendants applied Speedy Dry to absorb the oil and then had trucks sweep it, but a residue remained initially.
“You could see that nobody wanted to get on the racetrack,” said defending Cup Series champion Martin Truex Jr., who qualified second at 94.484 mph. “The guys that went early were really slow.”
“Even if it doesn’t affect the grip, it’s still in your head, and it affects you,” Larson said. “I wouldn’t say I tiptoed through (the affected area), but I was a little conscious through the first round.” In the second, he said he was able to attack the braking zones more vigorously.
Twelve drivers advanced from the 25-minute first session to the 10-minute second session.
Larson and Truex in the first row will be followed by Chase Elliott and Jamie McMurray. A.J. Allmendinger, the roadcourse expert from Los Gatos, was fifth.
Cup Series leader Kyle Busch will start ninth, second-place Kevin Harvick will start sixth and third-place Joey Logano 12th. Brad Keselowski, who stands fourth, will go 10th and Clint Bowyer (fifth) will start 19th.
“It will make the strategy more difficult for the guys up front when there’s fast cars in the middle of the pack,” Truex said. “It’s going to mix things up, for sure.”
Truex said he missed his pole chances by “6 inches” on one turn. “I missed my line and bumped the curb a little more than I would have liked to,” he said. Larson won the Pro Series West race at Sonoma in 2014 but hasn’t finished better than 15th in Cup races at his home track even though he hasn’t started lower than fifth.
As the series reaches the midpoint in the season, he ranks 10th in the standings with no wins but nine top-10 finishes, including four in the past five races. Rodgers takes checkered flag: Will Rodgers, who fell to fifth after an early lead, rallied to win the K&N Pro Series West Carneros 200. Aric Almirola was second and William Byron third. Haile Deegan, 16, of Temecula (Riverside County) was seventh.