When you think of NASCAR teams that you expect to win races on a road course, you'd have to put Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing at the top of the list. But last weekend, we say two very different teams battling it out for the win...
For the last five or so years, when NASCAR goes to a road course, you'd be forgiven for assuming that either Hendrick Motorsports or Joe Gibbs Racing would win. At Hendrick, the combination of Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson have racked up wins left, right, and center, while Joe Gibbs' Martin Truex Jr., Kyle Busch, and Christopher Bell each have each shown good speed, and Denny Hamlin is always in the mix, even if he hasn't won on a road course for many years. So heading to one of NASCAR's classic road courses in Sonoma, California, we would expect much of the same. Even qualifying suggested we could be in for another Elliott-Larson duel, as they locked out the front row. But the racing gods had other ideas.
Enter Trackhouse Racing's Daniel Suarez and RFK Racing's Chris Buescher. Now both of these two drivers have had relative success turning left and right, but you wouldn't put them at the top of your list in terms of pre-race favorites. Now, did we get an all-time classic race? No, not even close, but it was interesting and tense, as most of the top 10 drivers in the final part of the race were still looking for their first win of the season, or their career.
Why should I care?
Maybe you don't need to, but you should, because in my eyes, this was secretly one of NASCAR's most important weekends in years. In my eyes, it did three things:
It showed that Ross Chastain's drive at COTA earlier this year were not a fluke, and further underlined how good Trackhouse Racing is
By winning the race, Suarez finally managed to deliver on the promise he has shown throughout both the season and his career.
After running in the top 5 all day, Chris Buescher provided genuine hope for RFK Racing going forwards.
Trackhouse is the real deal
Sometime I wonder how Chip Ganassi feels after selling his NASCAR team, only to see it win more races in half a season than the previous few seasons combined. Either way, you can't deny that Justin Marks, Ross Chastain, Daniel Suarez, and the whole team are firing on all cylinders right now. Every week, they are top 10 runners and have won more races this year than Team Penske (if you don't count the all-star race). Crazy to think that about a team that made its debut last year and absorbed another team that wasn't necessarily always a frontrunner.
A sigh of relief for Suarez
Let's be honest, a driver who has raced for Joe Gibbs Racing and Stewart-Haas Racing for multiple years but fails to win a race does, understandably, have to be questioned over his ability. With pretty much any sport, more international involvement (and more importantly, success) means more exposure to new markets and an increase in fan engagement. Seeing the only non-American driver fail to capitalize on his chances with two of the sports best teams (OK, you can have your own opinion on SHR, but still) is not a good look for either party. So finally breaking through and getting that first win, in a completely well-deserved fashion, mind you, is good for both the driver and for the sport. It will also help earn respect from those in the sport, because there was no fluke in this win, Suarez qualified in the top 10, drove into the top 5, used a good strategy and some good passing moves to grab the lead, and withstood about 15 consecutive laps of constant pressure from behind.
A spark of hope for RFK?
Oh, the pain of being a long-standing Roush Racing fan. No other team epitomizes the idea of "I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you actually left." Comparing the decade from 2002-2012 and then 2012-2022, it's hard to believe that this is the same team. In fact, it's not even the same name, with the addition of Fenway in 2007 and then Keselowski in 2022. I'll get into this more in another article later (hopefully). But this performance from Chris Buescher made it feel like 2008 all over again. Qualified 3rd. Finished 2nd. Not since Matt Kenseth's shockingly great performance in the 2018 Brickyard 400 has this team had such a good chance of winning a non-superspeedway race on merit. It didn't work out in the end, but I hope this is the start of something better. The team needs it, I need it, the sport needs it. Admittedly, I'd be more encouraged if this wasn't a road course race, since these tracks are still an outlier on the schedule, but you have to take what you can get.
What happened to the usual suspects?
The first stage of the race pointed to another Kyle Larson-dominated affair, but it was not to be. Unusually poor strategy from the typically sharp-minded Cliff Daniels and the 5 team put Larson on the back foot after the first stage, after which he found it quite difficult to recover. And then once he was making progress in the top 10, the wheels literally came off, which more or less ended any chance of a good result. Chase Elliott had a car which seemed slightly less dominant, but still ran up front until a pit stop error and subsequent penalty essentially ended their hopes. William Byron and Alex Bowman were off the pace of their teammates and never really troubled the front.
As for Joe Gibbs Racing, the cars were just simply not fast enough. In the end, all the cars finished outside the top 25, through a combination of poor strategy, driver mistakes, and generally not being fast. Denny Hamlin qualified decently, but was never really in the hunt for the win, and Kyle Busch was running in the top 10 when he made an unforced error and spun, dropping him to the back. Martin Truex Jr. was uncharacteristically anonymous and was never a factor.
These absences left two unlikely candidates to take center stage, and in the end I think it worked out better for it.
A quick word on St. Louis
Although I was away for a while, I did manage to keep some tabs on NASCAR's St. Louis adventure at Gateway a few weeks ago. What I can say is this: Gateway should be the template for all NASCAR races. Full practice. Full grandstands. Concerts. Actual events for people to go to outside of racing. Expanded fan interaction. And the race was not too bad, even if it wasn't necessarily the greatest we've ever seen. Come on, NASCAR; gives the fans what they want: a reason to be there for more than just the three hours of racing.
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