{"id":26987,"date":"2019-06-23T19:29:46","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T00:29:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=26987"},"modified":"2019-06-23T19:31:04","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T00:31:04","slug":"nascar-sunday-sonoma-notebook-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2019\/06\/23\/nascar-sunday-sonoma-notebook-2\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR: Sunday Sonoma Notebook"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

 <\/p>\n

Matt DiBenedetto shines with career-best result at Sonoma<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

SONOMA, Calif. \u2013 In the last 11 laps of Sunday\u2019s Toyota\/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway, Matt DiBenedetto passed seven-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson for fifth place and 2014 Champion Kevin Harvick for fourth.<\/p>\n

When the race ended, the driver of the No. 95 Leavine Family Racing Toyota was closing on third-place finisher Ryan Blaney before running out of laps. But DiBenedetto nevertheless scored the best result of his career, eclipsing the sixth he posted at Bristol in 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just so lucky to be doing this,\u201d an elated DiBenedetto said after the race. \u201cMy path to get here has been so out of the ordinary and old-school, and I\u2019m so thankful. I can\u2019t tell you how many people took a chance on me to have this opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of those people was the late J.D. Gibbs, the former president of Joe Gibbs Racing who was inducted into the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was so much fun\u2014my home state,\u201d DiBenedetto said of his run. \u201cThis one is for my buddy, AJ Allmendinger for helping me so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

DiBenedetto also had some parting words for NASCAR Hall of Famer Darrell Waltrip, who on Sunday at Sonoma called his last race as an analyst for FOX Sports.<\/p>\n

\u201cDW, this one\u2019s for you, brother, DiBenedetto said. \u201cI\u2019m glad we got you a good finish. You\u2019ve done so much for me. You\u2019re the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

RYAN BLANEY FLEXES ROAD-COURSE MUSCLE IN WINE COUNTRY<\/b><\/p>\n

Even though he ran a distant third to Martin Truex Jr., Ryan Blaney\u2019s fortunes at Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series road courses have been looking up.<\/p>\n

In last year\u2019s Playoffs, Blaney won at the Charlotte Roval after Truex and Jimmie Johnson collided in the final chicane. And in Sunday\u2019s Toyota\/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway, he enjoyed a stress-free race running behind the leading pair of Truex and Kyle Busch.<\/p>\n

\u201cKind of smooth day for us,\u201d acknowledged Blaney, who leaves the 2.52-mile road courses ninth in the series standings and well inside the Playoff cut line. \u201cQualified decent. The way the stages are, you can either choose to finish the stage out, get stage points, but you have to restart way in the middle of the pack.<\/p>\n

\u201cOr (you can) pit early. That\u2019s kind of the strategy we wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sacrificing stage points by pitting early proved beneficial at the end of the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, even though you hate giving up stage points, you just get yourself ahead of all the mess,\u201d said Blaney, who finished more than 33 seconds behind the race winner. \u201cYou can kind of get in your own rhythm, do your own thing, not have to worry about someone behind you and in front of you all the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cA real decent day for the PPG Ford Mustang. Those top two guys were just gone. All the Gibbs cars looked pretty good. They got something figured out.\u201d<\/p>\n

KYLE LARSON HAPPY WITH TOP-10 RUN AT SONOMA<\/b><\/p>\n

Even though Kyle Larson won the pole for the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series event at Sonoma Raceway\u2014for the third straight year, no less\u2014his outlook for the race itself wasn\u2019t one of confidence.<\/p>\n

Though lightning fast for one lap, Larson has never been quick over the long run and had never finished better than 12th at the technical road course. Until Sunday.<\/p>\n

Though Larson lost the lead to William Byron on the first lap and gradually fell back through the field, he recovered during the final 46-lap green-flag run to finish 10th and was far from disappointed with the result.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was better than normal for us,\u201d Larson said. \u201cI fell back early but I was just taking care of my stuff. I seem to be a lot better on long runs than normal, so I\u2019m happy about that. And we came away with a top 10. So it was good.<\/p>\n

\u201cI finished better than I ever have here, so it was an improvement. We were just better on the long runs. So I was able to pass a lot of people there throughout that last stint. I was happy about it. We got stage points, which was good, so it was a good point day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Larson heads to next week\u2019s race at Chicagoland Speedway 15th in the series standings, still looking for his first victory of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service   Matt DiBenedetto shines with career-best result at Sonoma SONOMA, Calif. \u2013 In the last 11 laps of Sunday\u2019s Toyota\/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway, Matt DiBenedetto passed seven-time Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson for fifth place and 2014 Champion Kevin Harvick for fourth. When the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":26966,"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-26987","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\/MENCS_SR_Race_062319.jpg?fit=5095%2C3397","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-71h","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26987","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=26987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26988,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26987\/revisions\/26988"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}