{"id":26884,"date":"2019-06-21T19:05:14","date_gmt":"2019-06-22T00:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=26884"},"modified":"2019-06-23T15:55:29","modified_gmt":"2019-06-23T20:55:29","slug":"nascar-friday-sonoma-notebook-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2019\/06\/21\/nascar-friday-sonoma-notebook-2\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR: Friday Sonoma Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

 <\/p>\n

Off-track excursion stalls first Sonoma practice for Bubba Wallace<\/b><\/p>\n

SONOMA, Calif. \u2013 Bubba Wallace finally got a close-hand look at the carousel\u2014the section of Sonoma Raceway that restores the road course to 2.52 miles\u2014but the experience didn\u2019t come as soon as Wallace had anticipated.<\/p>\n

On his first lap in practice on Friday, Wallace spun off the track in Turn 3 and returned to the racing surface red-faced.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t even get a chance to look at it before I spun out,\u201d Wallace said between practice sessions for Sunday\u2019s Toyota\/Save Mart 350 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series race (3 p.m. ET on FS1, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). \u201cI got out and went up Turn 3 and thought, \u2018Man, these tires are cold,\u2019 and I spun out.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo now that\u2019s now the top of the board for the most embarrassing moment, because we were just cruising around. (Corey) LaJoie was in front of me, and he hadn\u2019t even fired off yet. (Michael) McDowell was behind me. We were just kind of cruising, putting stuff together, and the next thing you know, I was looking at the dirt. I was like, \u2018All right. Here we go. We got it out of the way.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Wallace finally got through the entire course, but he was 31st fastest of 38 drivers in the first practice session.<\/p>\n

He had a better time during the NASCAR off week when he and team owner Richard Petty saw the St. Louis Blues hockey team during the recent run to the Stanley Cup. David Steward, chairman and founder of World Wide Technology, Inc. (one of Wallace\u2019s primary sponsors), is part of the Blues ownership group.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever I was watching, it was a good time,\u201d Wallace said of his hockey experience. \u201cIt\u2019s way too fast for me, but, yeah, a good time\u2026 The crowd was involved from start to finish, and that was pretty cool, the atmosphere there.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the two games I went to were two losses, so I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m allowed back at a Blues game, but they ended up pulling it off.\u201d<\/p>\n

THE CAROUSEL WASN\u2019T WHAT PAUL MENARD EXPECTED<\/b><\/p>\n

Most drivers prepared for Sunday\u2019s Toyota\/Save Mart 350 by running laps in a simulator that incorporated the carousel into the program.<\/p>\n

But the reality of the new stretch of track connecting Turns 4 and 7 wasn\u2019t what Paul Menard expected.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was cool,\u201d said Menard, who was 11th fastest in Friday\u2019s opening practice. \u201cI\u2019ve watched it a bunch on TV with IndyCar and sportscars. It\u2019s smaller than what I thought. I thought it would be wider, a more opened-up corner than it is.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really pretty narrow and kind of a short corner. I was thinking it would be more like the carousel at Road America. This is a lot shorter and some pretty big elevation changes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new configuration that incorporates Turns 5 and 6 also transforms Turn 7 into a second hairpin on a course that already features tight Turn 11.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, we aren\u2019t even on the same race track as we used to be,\u201d Menard said. \u201cWe used to run long and do a 160-degree corner and now we bypass that and do that double right a little tighter. It\u2019s a totally different corner now.\u201d<\/p>\n

WHY WASN\u2019T THE CAROUSEL INCORPORATED EARLIER?<\/b><\/p>\n

Like father, unlike son.<\/p>\n

In 1998, Speedway Motorsports Inc. founder Bruton Smith opted to shorten Sonoma Raceway to 1.99 miles so that fans could see the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series cars pass by at shorter intervals.<\/p>\n

But his son, SMI CEO Marcus Smith, was all in when consensus favored restoring the track to its 2.52-mile length with the return of the carousel between Turns 4 and 7.<\/p>\n

The change could have happened earlier, but for one main factor.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo tell the truth, part of the reason we hadn\u2019t up till now was laziness,\u201d said track president Steve Page. \u201cThe amount of equipment that shows up for a Cup race these days\u2014compared to when I first got here in the \u201890s\u2014it\u2019s incredible. I just sit and watch all this stuff roll in from my office up on the hill.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe carousel was a really convenient place to stash it all. We used to put all the trucks we used for driver intros and all this other equipment there. We\u2019d talk about the carousel and say, \u2018It really would be great to bring it back, but what are we going to do with all that stuff?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But the sentiment favoring the return of the carousel finally prevailed in the track\u2019s 50th anniversary year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think everybody today enjoys a throwback,\u201d Marcus Smith said. \u201cAnd particularly with the 50th year, it makes a lot of sense to embrace the past. I love celebrating history in motorsports and NASCAR. When you think about Sonoma Raceway, one of the most storied spots on the track, the section of the carousel, is unique to Sonoma Raceway.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t run it for a long time in NASCAR, and after talking to a few drivers over the last week or so, the simulator only takes you so far, and I think that\u2019s going to make it super exciting\u2026 Kevin Harvick and I were having breakfast one morning, and he said, \u2018Hey, have you thought about running the carousel?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was just after the Roval race (at Charlotte Motor Speedway), posing the idea that, \u2018You already did something crazy\u2014how about something else?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith then called Page, and the first response was, \u201cI don\u2019t know where we\u2019re going to put the stuff,\u201d but serious conversations followed, and the change was implemented.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service   Off-track excursion stalls first Sonoma practice for Bubba Wallace SONOMA, Calif. \u2013 Bubba Wallace finally got a close-hand look at the carousel\u2014the section of Sonoma Raceway that restores the road course to 2.52 miles\u2014but the experience didn\u2019t come as soon as Wallace had anticipated. On his first lap […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":26887,"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-26884","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\/362439.jpg?fit=2513%2C1676","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-6ZC","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26884","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=26884"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26888,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26884\/revisions\/26888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}