History repeats: Four years after last taste of wine, Truex goes back to victory lane in Toyota/Save Mart 350 over Kyle Busch
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (Shamboozled.com)
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
SONOMA-It’s no secret that Martin Truex Jr. has always enjoyed racing at Sonoma Raceway. Even though the wine may not be his thing, racing on the track certainly is as he has conquered both configurations of the Northern California road course a total of three times entering the 2023 Toyota/Save Mart 350.
On Sunday’s running of the annual NASCAR Cup Series race in Wine County, history repeated itself as the Joe Gibbs Racing driver went to victory lane for the second time in the regular season and third overall. It was his 33rd victory of his career.
“I really think he’s confident when he comes here. It really feels like he’s got a real feel for Sonoma,” car owner Joe Gibbs explained. “Why that would happen with a driver, we all know, we see it from time to time, drivers seem to have a real I think confidence about some tracks. He’s that way here.”
Truex did it by leading 4 times for a race-high of 51 laps. When the caution came out for Denny Hamlin wrecking on the front stretch with 17 to go on lap 93. He then came in for a four-tire stop and won the race off of pit road. He got past Chase Elliott, Tyler Reddick, and Ryan Blaney on the next restart to get the victory.
In the first stage, Truex was the biggest mover going from 8th to 2nd to gain some valuable stage points as well. Because of this, he had the track position needed to dictate the strategy for the rest of the race.
The only other caution of the race came out on lap 51 for an uncontrolled tire down pit road from the 38 of Zane Smith. This messed up the team’s strategy and didn’t allow them to get stage points.
Truex also had a great car over the long run. It should come as no surprise as that is how he won in 2018 and 2019 as well.
With the win and the solid point day where scored 53 points, he now holds the points lead with 10 races left in the regular season before the Cup Series playoffs start in September. This was also his second win in California for the season, having won the Busch Light Clash in February to kickstart his solid season so far.
“I talked about it right after that, that it was a big deal for us just to understand that we were making the right decisions. Short tracks were a struggle for us last year,” Truex explained. “To go to the Clash and do that, it was like, ‘Okay, we’re going down the right road here with the things that we’re thinking that we did last year, the things we’re working on, the direction we’re heading for short tracks. That was a good confidence booster. Confidence is a huge part of this.
“I said it a lot. It’s not so much for the driver I don’t think,” Truex continued. “It’s more for the engineers, the crew chief, the guys that are, like, making the big decisions on the car. So many things they have to decide on before we come to the track of what they’re going to put in the car with the simulation, all the things that they have to do.”
All of the Toyota teams struggled at this very race last year with none finishing in the top 15. They have now figured out the NextGen car and were able to return to victory lane just a year later.
“Just everything it took to be successful here. I mean, honestly, we had some issues last year. We’d show up at road courses, we would kind of out-smart ourselves, reinvent the wheel, come up with some super crazy trick setup because we knew our cars were not as good as the other manufacturers,” Truex said as to what changed this time at Sonoma. “We shot ourselves in the foot a few times. Here was one of them, for sure. We came here, completely disregarded everything we know about this track thinking it was a new car, it was going to be different. We ran terrible. It was like, ‘Okay, that was dumb, we’re idiots.’”
Second-place finisher Kyle Busch jumped into the top five and stayed there all day after the lap 51 caution came out. However, he didn’t have anything for Truex despite trying his hardest at the end.
“I felt like I was trying everything I could right there anyways just trying to keep him honest and stay with him,” Busch explained of the final run where he and Truex were basically even. “There was about three laps where I was a little bit quicker than him and I probably should have taken it a little bit, gotten aggressive, but we would have made contact. So but then he was able to drive away he had a better long-run car anyway.”
Joey Logano finished third in the race. He never had the speed needed to even contend in the race either.
Rounding out the top five were Chris Buescher and Chase Elliott. AJ Allmendinger, Michael McDowell, Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell, and Ross Chastain rounded out the top 10.
The NASCAR Cup Series will take their only off week of the year over Father’s Day weekend before racing at Nashville Superspeedway on June 25th. That will also mark the first race of the NASCAR on NBC portion of the schedule as this was it for the NASCAR on FOX season.
