Who Will Make It A Perfect 10?

Who Will Make It A Perfect 10?

 Nine different drivers have won the last nine races at Sonoma.

Maybe even more noteworthy: For the last seven of those winners, it was the first NASCAR Sprint Cup Series road-course win of their careers.

Of course, that begs the following question: Who can make it 10-for-10 … and better yet, 8-for-8. It’s a surprisingly long list. Glad you asked …

Marcos Ambrose: When NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France announced the new championship format, one of the first thoughts that crossed many fans’ minds had to be: “This is Ambrose’s best chance to make the Chase.” Ambrose is a road-course whiz, a ringer who also is a series regular, with two prime opportunities to parlay that into a spot in NASCAR’s playoffs. The first comes this weekend in Sonoma, where he has finished in the top 10 in five consecutive races. He does have two road course victories, both at Watkins Glen.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.: A Sonoma win for Earnhardt is an unlikely scenario, despite the “career yea” he is having. In 14 Sonoma starts, Earnhardt has yet to finish in the top 10 – let alone win. His best finish is was 11th, which he’s done three times. Still, he enters this weekend on the heels of three consecutive top-10 finishes, including his second win of the season, at Pocono. Earnhardt has yet to win a road-course race of any kind in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

Matt Kenseth: Like Earnhardt, Kenseth is a superb talent with a surprisingly rocky record in road course races. In 14 starts at Sonoma, he has only one top-10 finish. He, too, is a career “0-fer” at road courses.

AJ Allmendinger: When Allmendinger showed up to a NASCAR Nationwide Series race in 2013, he won. In two starts, both at road courses, Allmendinger took the Team Penske No. 22 Ford to Victory Lane, leading a combined 102 of the 149 laps run at Road America and Mid-Ohio last year. At Sonoma, Allmendinger has two top 10s and has finished 13th or better in each of the last four races.

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.”