Bowyer A Modern Day Road Course Ringer
For a driver who built his career on short- and dirt-track dominance, Clint Bowyer took to road-course racing as if he
came up through the sports car ranks.
In 16 road-course starts, Bowyer has a win (at Sonoma), six top fives and nine top 10s. At Sonoma specifically, Bowyer
joins Kurt Busch as the only two drivers with three consecutive top-five finishes coming into this race.
It’s
a perfect storm for a Bowyer victory. Looking to snap a 56-race win
drought, Bowyer also looks to capitalize on
his Sonoma success and his recent momentum; he has three consecutive
finishes of 11th or better to climb from 20th to 14th in points.
And who knows, a Sonoma win could snowball into a bigger things. It did in 2012. After his Sonoma win, Bowyer won again
at Richmond and Charlotte, eventually finishing second in the series championship standings.
Gordon, Stewart Have The ‘Right’ Stuff
Twice a year, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series drivers turn left and right – at Sonoma Raceway and Watkins Glen International.
And in those two races, Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart are no-doubt-about-it threats to win.
Gordon
wears the road-course crown as the series’ all-time winner in this
style of racing. He has a series-high five
wins at Sonoma, the last coming in 2006. Since then, he has done just
about everything but win, scoring top-10 finishes in each of the last
eight races – the longest streak in the series at Sonoma. Last year, he
finished second to Martin Truex Jr.
Stewart has two wins at Sonoma, the last coming in 2005. He, too, has been strong since that win nearly a decade ago,
finishing in the top 10 in five of the last seven races.
He’s also had a string of solid starts recently. Stewart finished seventh in Dover, and followed that up with a performance
at Pocono that could’ve ended in victory – if not for a pit road speeding penalty that Stewart labeled as a “driver error.”
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