{"id":19662,"date":"2018-06-22T18:33:57","date_gmt":"2018-06-22T23:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=19662"},"modified":"2018-06-24T11:22:03","modified_gmt":"2018-06-24T16:22:03","slug":"nascar-friday-sonoma-notebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2018\/06\/22\/nascar-friday-sonoma-notebook\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR: Friday Sonoma Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sonoma holds fond memories for Monster Energy NASCAR Cup champion<\/b> <\/b><\/p>\n

SONOMA, Calif. \u2013 Martin Truex Jr.\u2019s<\/strong> 2013 victory at Sonoma Raceway<\/strong> holds a special place among the 17 wins the reigning Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series<\/a> champion has accumulated since his full-time debut in 2006.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Martin Truex Jr., driver of the #78 5-hour ENERGY\/Bass Pro Shops Toyota, practices for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Toyota\/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway on June 22, 2018 in Sonoma, California. (Photo by Sean Gardner\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

Coming to California that year, Truex had been winless since his maiden Cup victory at Dover in 2007, a drought that had reached 218 races.<\/p>\n

\u201cA long time, very long \u2013 don\u2019t remind me,\u201d said Truex, a featured guest at a Sonoma Raceway luncheon on Thursday in San Francisco. \u201cIt was one of those weekends where everything just felt right. We had a good practice. We had, I felt like, a really good setup for the race.\u201d<\/p>\n

Truex finished 8.133 seconds ahead of runner-up Jeff Gordon, exceeding the 7.355-second margin of victory in his inaugural win at Dover six years earlier. Gordon and third-through-sixth-place finishers Carl Edwards, Kurt Busch, Clint Bowyer and Kasey Kahne all have at least one Sonoma triumph on their respective resumes.<\/p>\n

Obviously, Truex beat the best to score his second win.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe ran third early on in the race for a while and had some pit strategy work out a little bit in our favor,\u201d Truex said. \u201cWe were able to get the lead and then just managed the gap and the tires and really were able to drive away on long runs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was awesome. We had a couple of late-race restarts where some guys that were really good there back then \u2013 (Juan Pablo) Montoya, I think, was running second for a while\u2026 but we were able to drive away and control the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember how awesome it felt, how amazing it was, because it had been so long, and I\u2019d been working so hard to try to get back to Victory Lane. Our team at that time (Michael Waltrip Racing) had been so close to winning so many times. It seemed like every time, somebody would just pull the rug out from under us.\u201d<\/p>\n

As it turned out, that victory represented the pinnacle of Truex\u2019s career at MWR. He wouldn\u2019t win again until 2015 at Pocono, after he had moved to Furniture Row Racing, the team he led to the 2017 title.<\/b><\/p>\n

DENNY HAMLIN EXPECTS STRONG SHOWING IN NEXT 10 WEEKS<\/b><\/p>\n

Denny Hamlin\u2019s No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota hasn\u2019t had the speed this season to match the Stewart-Haas Racing Fords, but Hamlin expects that to change as the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup season winds toward the Playoffs.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Denny Hamlin, driver of the #11 FedEx Express Toyota, signs autographs for fans during practice for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series Toyota\/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway on June 22, 2018 in Sonoma, California. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s not that Hamlin hasn\u2019t been consistently fast this year. After all, he has six top-five finishes in 15 races and currently is eighth in the series standings. But Hamlin hasn\u2019t had the race-winning speed to match the Stewart-Haas cars \u2013 or teammate Kyle Busch, for that matter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, at worst any weekend, we\u2019ve been an eighth-place car and at best, we\u2019ve been a second-or-third-place car,\u201d said Hamlin, who was second fastest to Stewart-Haas driver Kurt Busch in Friday\u2019s final practice at Sonoma Raceway. \u201cCertainly, the results I don\u2019t think show the speed we actually do have.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty confident the second half of the year we\u2019re going to be pretty strong. I feel like we\u2019ve really made gains over the last month or so. I\u2019d like to get inside the top five in points before the end of the regular season and win a couple races \u2013 that\u2019s a goal that we have that is achievable in the next 10 weeks or so.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\nhttp:\/\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/SR_MENCS_Hamlin_062218.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service   Sonoma holds fond memories for Monster Energy NASCAR Cup champion  SONOMA, Calif. \u2013 Martin Truex Jr.\u2019s 2013 victory at Sonoma Raceway holds a special place among the 17 wins the reigning Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion has accumulated since his full-time debut in 2006. Coming to California that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19664,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[16,455,454],"class_list":["post-19662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-nascar","tag-sonoma-raceway","tag-toyotasave-mart-350"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/356367.jpg?fit=2481%2C1654","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-578","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19662"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19668,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19662\/revisions\/19668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}