The NASCAR Cup Series headed to California’s wine country for the second road course race of the 2024 season.
On track speeds were borderline ridiculous, as 23 cars managed to put down lap times that were faster than the previous track record. Ultimately, Joey Logano would collect to pole, with Tyler Reddick starting on his outside.
While road course races in the NextGen car have often been marked by a general lack of chaos and spread-out racing (excluding the Chicago street race), Sunday’s race at Sonoma went against the grain with seven cautions across the races first two stages, many of which collected multiple cars. Denny Hamlin, Ty Gibbs, Austin Dillon, Cam Waters, Chase Briscoe, Justin Haley, and Josh Berry all suffered DNF’s.
Tyler Reddick & Kyle Larson were the class of the field through the caution-slowed early goings, but Reddick ran into some trouble coming to the end stage 2 as he got together with Larson racing for position after leaving pit road, locked up & flat-spotted his brand new left front tire, and was never able to fully recover from the slight damage.
It was a tale of two races however, as despite all the chaos of the early stages, the races final stage went green wire to wire, allowing various tire and fuel strategies to play out.
Ultimately, it was Kyle Larson who came out on top, passing Martin Truex Jr & Chris Buescher with eight laps to go thanks to having 13 lap fresher tires. Michael McDowell was on a similar strategy as Larson, and managed to come home second. Chris Buescher, who led laps thanks to a variety of strategy calls, would hang on to finish third. Chase Elliott & Ross Chastain would round out the top-5.
Truex would go on to run out of fuel on the final lap, and would stall about 100 yards from the finish line. Truex did manage to avoid a DNF however, as he put his car in gear, and continuously cranked the starter, which provided just enough power to allow the 19 car to crawl across the start finish line in 27th place.
Elsewhere on the final lap, Ross Chastain wrecked Kyle Busch out of 5th place. To add insult to injury, Busch would then go on to cut down a tire as well, and limp across the finish line in p12.
Fresh off of his drawn out waiver drama, this win marked Larson’s third of the season, tying Denny Hamlin & William Byron for the most on the year.
Results:
Image credit: Hendrick Motorsports on X
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