{"id":26857,"date":"2019-06-22T16:25:01","date_gmt":"2019-06-22T21:25:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=26857"},"modified":"2019-06-23T14:19:32","modified_gmt":"2019-06-23T19:19:32","slug":"nascar-saturday-sonoma-notebook-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2019\/06\/22\/nascar-saturday-sonoma-notebook-2\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR: Saturday Sonoma Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

 <\/b><\/p>\n

William Byron appreciates crew chief Chad Knaus\u2019 direct approach<\/b><\/p>\n

SONOMA, Calif. \u2013 As William Byron took his first quick laps around Sonoma Raceway in Friday\u2019s opening Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice, he got a surprise.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was wild,\u201d said Byron, who was 14th fastest in the session. \u201cI was surprised how much grip the track has lost in some areas. It\u2019s not as black as it was last year, for sure. I feel like it has less grip up the hill into Turn 1, which is kind of interesting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe track was really dirty to start, so it had to get cleaned up. Guys were throwing rocks into the groove, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one thing that hasn\u2019t surprised Byron, it\u2019s the no-nonsense relationship he has developed with seven-time champion crew chief Chad Knaus, who moved to Byron\u2019s No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet this season after 17 years with Jimmie Johnson.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been very similar to what I thought it would be,\u201d Byron said of the interaction with Knaus. \u201cI\u2019ve been around him for about a year now, in the debriefs and knowing how he works with Jimmie and his team. I feel like it wasn\u2019t much of a surprise.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, I feel like he\u2019s very direct, so you don\u2019t have to worry about whether he\u2019s trying to send you a message in a certain way or if he\u2019s trying to blow you off. He\u2019ll tell you if you\u2019re doing something wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

That approach seems to suit Byron.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think so,\u201d said Byron, who improved to seventh in Friday\u2019s final practice. \u201cI don\u2019t really think there\u2019s any reason to be offended at the track when someone tells you what you\u2019re doing wrong. You have to learn from it. He\u2019s helped me with that by just being really direct and not having to worry about the emotional side of things at the track.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Byron continued to improve his speed, qualifying second for Sunday\u2019s Toyota\/Save Mart 350 behind pole winner Kyle Larson.<\/p>\n

DAVID RAGAN CAN BENEFIT FROM MICHAEL MCDOWELL\u2019S EXPERTISE<\/b><\/p>\n

Michael McDowell isn\u2019t a road-course ringer, but he would be if he weren\u2019t a full-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series driver for Front Row Motorsports.<\/p>\n

Before he came to stock car racing, McDowell was an instructor at the Bondurant Racing School in Chandler, Arizona. David Ragan clearly feels a coattail effect from having McDowell as a teammate at Front Row as he readies for Sunday\u2019s Toyota\/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway (3 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely,\u201d Ragan said. \u201cOver the years, I have had great teammates that run good out here. Having a teammate like Michael as we are coming to a track where he has raced on the carousel before, so he kind of knows where the passing zone is, where you can be aggressive and where you need to be conservative at.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe gives you a few of those tips. Obviously, he\u2019s racing against us, so he isn\u2019t going to tell us everything. It\u2019s good to have a teammate like that to help me as a driver, but to also help the company to work on adjustments and gear ratios and what works good for him, I can usually adapt and make it work for me too.\u201d<\/p>\n

McDowell qualified 13th for Sunday\u2019s race, missing the second round by .099 seconds. Ragan wasn\u2019t far behind. He\u2019ll start 18th.<\/p>\n

NEW BERM IN TURN 5 DOESN\u2019T AFFECT DENNY HAMLIN<\/b><\/p>\n

Denny Hamlin wasn\u2019t one of the drivers running off course in Turn 5 during practice and kicking up dirt and debris onto the racing surface.<\/p>\n

But enough drivers had difficulty in the new corner\u2014thanks to the reinstitution of the Sonoma Raceway carousel\u2014that the competitors were greeted with a new berm in that corner when they came to the track for qualifying on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Kyle Busch, Hamlin\u2019s Joe Gibbs Racing teammate, lobbied for curbing in the corner.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody was dumping their right sides off the race track and dumping dirt on the race track and kind of messing it up for the people that were behind them,\u201d Busch said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to get really dirty over there. Guys might be racing side-by-side during the race. The outside guy is definitely going to want to crowd the inside guy and go halfway into the dirt. So it was going to get interesting.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re a guy that\u2019s leading the race\u2014and you\u2019re coming down to the last lap\u2014just dump your tires into the dirt and the guy behind you is never going to catch you. It didn\u2019t seem like it was all that smart not to have a curb over there.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the new berm didn\u2019t faze Hamlin, who had the fastest Toyota in Saturday\u2019s qualifying (sixth overall).<\/p>\n

\u201cIt didn\u2019t affect me any,\u201d said Hamlin, who qualified one spot ahead of Busch. \u201cI wasn\u2019t one of the guys that was getting off the track.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was good, because, obviously, when it gets down in the race, if you didn\u2019t have that, you would just run in the dirt. It is unique for sure. We\u2019re going to use every bit of the racetrack. I didn\u2019t really use it to begin with, but I think it\u2019s good that they can keep the track clean.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service   William Byron appreciates crew chief Chad Knaus\u2019 direct approach SONOMA, Calif. \u2013 As William Byron took his first quick laps around Sonoma Raceway in Friday\u2019s opening Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series practice, he got a surprise. \u201cIt was wild,\u201d said Byron, who was 14th fastest in the session. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":26859,"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],"class_list":["post-26857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-nascar","tag-sonoma-raceway"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/362449.jpg?fit=4488%2C2992","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-6Zb","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26857","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\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26857"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26858,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26857\/revisions\/26858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}