NASCAR road course racing is tough trying to race your way to the front without the aid of caution it takes a legendary run to pull off this incredible feat, fresh tires or worn tires. At Sonoma with a few places to pass but as many as required and at the pace required when trying to run down the leader in a cleaner track. Sunday we saw a drive from Larson that should go down in history as one of the greatest rundowns in the history of NASCAR.
Cautions Breed Cautions
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The first two stages of the race were riddled with caution. Seven cautions plagued the first two stages. Denny Hamlin’s engine blew up three laps into the race. Martin Truex Jr. got stacked up and went around into the grass. Chase Briscoe went around and caused several drivers to have serious damage including pole-sitter Joey Logano. However, Tyler Reddick did win stage one in the May lay.
In stage 2 Bubba Wallace went wide coming off turn ten into the grass causing drivers to scramble and give him space to come back onto the track. In the scramble, Josh Berry cut to the inside and tagged Erik Jones causing the back end of Berry’s car to fishtail and lock up the brakes going into the hairpin in turn 11. Chris Buscher was able to win the stage and gain valuable points in his bid for the playoffs.
The Great Chase
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In the final stage of the race the stage miraculously the entire stage went caution-free. This allowed strategy to play out and it certainly did. Chris Buscher and Martin Truex Jr. pitted on lap 68. Kyle Larson pitted on lap 83 and was eight seconds behind the leaders Buscher and Truex Jr. with 28 laps to go. Truex was frantically trying to get around Buscher to try to build a larger gap between himself and Larson.
Larson gained tremendous ground on the leaders and with nine laps to go Larson had caught up to Buscher and Truex. In a last-ditch effort, Truex lunged at Buscher to try to get Buscher in between himself and Larson. Truex cleared Buscher however in the effort to gain ground between himself and Larson Truex ran wide in seven allowing Larson through and on to the win.
Truex Jr. coming to the checkered flag just mere feet from the line ran out of gas similar to Ryan Blaney last week at Gateway. Truex would finish 27th the final car on the lead lap. Michael Mcdowell would inherit second place and Buscher would finish third. In the dash to the checkers, Ross Chastain and Kyle Busch got physical for fifth place. Busch got the short end and finished 12th.
Also Read: NASCAR New Bracket 2025: Is this Good or Bad
Post-Race Interviews With Larson’s Team
After the race, Kyle Larson talked about the help he got from Buscher holding up Truex Jr.:
Thankful that we had enough grip. Thankful, too, that those guys got racing and Martin never got clear really to where I could get stuck in third and that really saved the race. I thought, too, once he got the lead, I’m like, ‘Man, I hope he doesn’t have somebody to judge off of here into (Turn) 4 and he misses the apex’, and sure enough, he did, and I had a big run.
Cliff Daniels who is Larson’s Crew Chief explained his brilliant pit strategy:
Of course, we could consider pitting that whole time but you’re still looking at your green flag laps versus run yellow flag laps run ratio. We just didn’t have that many laps on our tires and, every time you take off you had really good pace and so at that point, you were pushing your fuel windows far enough so that under green and stage three you weren’t gonna have to take two cans of fuel, which we still didn’t have to do.
So we knew we could have the advantage of a faster stop time running deeper into stage three and having fresh tires to your point about giving Kyle fresher tires it was gonna put us more in offensive situation that defensive situation.
With someone like Larson, you always want to be in the offensive position of a wildly talented once-in-a-generation driver who has shown whether on dirt or pavement, that he is always the one to beat. Larson even got praise from one of the legends of the sport 4 time Cup Champion Jeff Gordon told reporters:
When those other guys came into the pit and he’s out there on a little bit older tires (and) maintaining lap times the way he was, those are just the things that great drivers do and do well, and he’s one of the greats.
About The Author
Dillon Hildreth is a writer for Total Apex and a lifelong fan of Football with his favorite teams being the New England Patriots and the Georgia Bulldogs. Dillon is also a fan of Motorsports Red Bull in Formula One and William Byron in NASCAR. You can catch Dillon Stream F1, NASCAR, and other video games and side casts on Twitch.
