Columnists
Email
Print
Change of Pace: Things are different in Sonoma
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: June 22, 2008
Croquet, anyone?
Wine, cheese, croquet….
Really good wine -- hey, how about a blind tasting of Jeff Gordon's vino against Richard Childress' stuff?
Really good cheese … and really bad croquet: "You have to do croquet, "Gordon insists, when coming to Sonoma.
"But is anybody really good at croquet?"
Yes, it's that kind of weekend for the NASCAR guys out in northern California, an annual off-the-wall thing for the stock-car crowd, a weekend for the good, bad and ugly. That's the way racing at Sonoma and Watkins Glen typically goes. Fridays typically ugly, as Tony Stewart and Kyle Busch showed; Sundays, well, curious, right up till those final 20 laps when these guys suddenly turn into Twilight Zone monsters and you can't even trust your best friend when you get to the top of that first turn hill or over in the wilderness esses.
Watch fuel mileage, gamble just right, force rivals play to your game, that's one way to look at today's race on the hilly course north of San Francisco. That's the way that Juan Pablo Montoya and then-crew chief Donnie Wingo won Sonoma last summer.
The traditional way to play the road-racing game, though, is to have a special car armed with all the trick gear and best brakes, and a top-notch road racer, such as Gordon, Tony Stewart or Robby Gordon, the three best in NASCAR right now.
But the Montoya-Wingo gambit gave Jeff Gordon a different perspective: "You always run road courses based on fuel mileage, not as much on tire wear and track position. So when those guys did what they did last year, it opened our eyes -- that we've got to start focusing more on fuel mileage.
"We didn't get good fuel mileage, so we really worked hard on it for Watkins Glen last year, and we got better at it.
"But everybody is going to be focused on that."
"Fuel mileage is the game," Jeff Burton said. "You want to stop as soon as possible, and the first stop happens well before you're out of fuel. It will be an issue."
At least that should mean a more unusual afternoon than usual at the sport's wine country track.
Dale Earnhardt Jr., who may remember his father's struggles on the tour's road courses, isn't optimistic about following his Michigan gas-mileage win with anything spectacular, but he expects to get some TV time on TNT: "I'm going to screw up; trust me, I'll screw it up."
So he's glad to have a little points cushion in the Sprint Cup standings. "I can get through Watkins Glen OK," he said. But Sonoma: "I just don't run good. Never liked coming, don't like the track -- it's not a fun track to compete on. Oh, it's fun to goof off and raise a little bit of hell. But I don't like being in competition on it. These cars ain't built for it.
"Impossible to pass. Where do you pass? A couple of brake zones, but that's about it. You just wait on people to screw up.
"We'll probably try to save as much gas as we can.
"I'm not very good at road racing. I'm not a big fan of it. I don't really run that well, so I'm just hoping to get through the weekend."
Sitting pretty
The drivers to beat today: Jeff Gordon, Stewart and Robby Gordon, although Stewart will have to come from the back of the pack.
It's been a good spring for Richard Childress' guys -- Jeff Burton, Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer -- and for the veteran car owner too, who has signed two new big-buck sponsors, taking General Mills from Petty Enterprises and Caterpillar from Bill Davis.
This may not be shaping up as a great weekend for Burton, Harvick and Bowyer. But while others in the sport may be having a rough time of it, signing sponsors, Burton, who comes into today's Sonoma 350 tight on Kyle Busch's tail in the Sprint Cup playoff chase, is sitting on top of the world, with a new sponsor in the bank.
"It's important sponsors want to talk to us, that we're in their consideration," Burton said of Childress' two home runs. "Certainly it's a tough market, there are not as many sponsors out there as we'd like to have, and more teams than we'd like to have looking for sponsors.
"So we feel good about the amount of interest. And that goes back to Richard.
"Richard is a very competitive person. More importantly, he's very honest, very straightforward, and I think sponsors recognize that, because they know what they are going to get."
And right now it looks like Childress' sponsors have three legitimate title contenders, if Childress can just find them a little more speed.
"I felt really good about our speed at Charlotte, I felt really good about our speed at Pocono," Burton said. "We didn't have a good week last week obviously (a 15th at Michigan).
"But our better days are ahead of us. We have a lot of stuff going on I'm really excited about. I feel good about where we are."
Teammate Clint Bowyer, last fall's title-race surprise, won Richmond in early May for Childress, but since then he's hit the skids: a 15th at Darlington, 25th at Charlotte, 36th at Dover, 39th at Pocono, and 26th at Michigan.
It's time for a turnaround, if he and crew chief Gil Martin are to hang in for the championship run.
Last season Bowyer and Martin sneaked into the title game. This year? "It has been a lot different," Bowyer said. "Making the chase was tough, and then finishing third. A lot of things have changed.
"But still you have to be good week-in, week-out. We are focused on bouncing back from three or four bad runs. We had some bad luck, we had a part failure, I crashed out in Pocono. It is time to get back on track."
But at Sonoma? Well, this classic Midwestern "Aw, shucks" kind of guy may not be known for his road-racing skills, but he did finish fourth at Sonoma last June.
"The track has been good to us," Bowyer said. "You have to hone in on fuel mileage … and be fast. You still have to be fast on these tracks.
"I really enjoy the technical part of the Sonoma course. It is slower and more technical than Watkins Glen. I enjoy this one more than Watkins Glen. The Glen is real fast, wide-open; throw the car around and go. At Sonoma you have to really hit your marks and focus.
"If you race the track, make good fuel mileage, and make the right decisions, you will have a good finish.
"If you get caught up racing people, well, there are always people on different agendas -- new tires that come flying by you. You have to just keep racing the track. Keep the big picture in mind.
"We fired off seven top-10s in a row earlier in the season (Atlanta, Bristol, Martinsville, Texas, Phoenix, Talladega and Richmond).
"We have just had three or four bad runs. Two of them have been our mistake. Dover could have been a top-five run. Take away those two, and we would be plenty fine.
"But two 38ths has been a hard hit."
Still, it's only the first weekend of summer, and more than two months until the playoff cut. Is it too early to sweat? "It is but it ain't," Bowyer said. "I mean, every weekend is a worry."
■ Mike Mulhern can be reached at mmulhern@wsjournal.com.
Email
Print
ADVERTISEMENT
See community events or add your own! Click here!
Advertisement
