RaceSheets NASCAR DFS Preview: Toyota/Save Mart 350

Following Kyle Busch’s victory at Gateway, NASCAR hops on Interstate 70 and heads back west to California for this week’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 in Wine Country. So let’s wrap up action from this past weekend’s Enjoy Illinois 300, review numbers from last year at Sonoma, and assess some expectations for this Sunday afternoon in Sonoma, Calif. 

Enjoy Illinois 300 Wrap Up

World Wide Technology Raceway (Gateway) has all the makings of a fun track that gives fans and drivers a quality experience. However, in this Generation Seven car, utilizing the intermediate package, this track is unwatchable. 

The term “lap turner” gets thrown around but Sunday afternoon’s race in Madison, Illinois was the textbook definition of a lap turner. Unless you made a move on a restart (like Kyle Busch did to both Denny Hamlin and Kyle Larson late in the race) everyone was destined to fall in line behind the leader and just ride around until the stage break or pit stops. 

With minimal tire fall-off, if any, there was no waiting to reel in someone who took off too fast. The leader could simply put their foot down on the gas pedal sail off and hope a caution didn’t happen in between a pit cycle that would bunch the field back up or allow teams to use a two-tire strategy to gain track position. 

That is precisely how Kyle Larson and Michael McDowell propelled themselves up the leaderboard during the third stage. Despite being stuck around where they started for the bulk of the day, both only took two tires in the final stage and held on for top 10 finishes despite both having efforts that don’t reflect their final position. 

The one thing that did manage to break up the monotony of this race was the recurring brake rotor failures (four in total) and the subsequent spin-outs that resulted from the field getting bunched back together.

This all to say, the Generation Seven car, intermediate package managed to transform Gateway into a flatter Texas, and with that taste in fans’ and drivers’ periphery, don’t be shocked if the Cup Series moves on from WWTR in 2023 or NASCAR tries to run a short track package here despite this being nearly the same length as Darlington. 

Sonoma Raceway

Sonoma Raceway, our second road course on the 2023 Cup Series calendar, is a 2.29-mile long, 12-turn course. Sonoma is considered one of the toughest and truest road courses on the calendar due it’s shape, with no real straightaways that would maximize horsepower over braking skill as well as the elevation changes (160 feet in totality) that will have drivers climbing and descending hills. 

Thus, while it cuts down the data set, DFS players could knock out tracks like the Indianapolis Grand Prix and the Charlotte Roval from their research processes as those stadium courses have minimal corollary to Sonoma. 

In last year’s iteration of this race, Daniel Suarez broke through and won his first ever Cup Series race after leading 47 of the 110 total laps. Starting eighth on the grid, Suarez was an unconventional pick as Sonoma has typically seen its top lap leader come from the front row — whether looking at the stage break era or before that. However, Suarez made sense in the light of what he had previously done at COTA back in the Spring when he had similarly ascended to the lead but fell back toward the end of the race. 

One of the buried facts from this race is that Suarez was able to ascend to the lead and sit on that lead after the favorites (Chase Elliott, Kyle Larson) ran into trouble during the third stage. Elliott and Larson had combined to lead the first 52 laps and at the end of the second stage (lap 57) neither were in the top 10 after trading track position in lieu of stage points. Following the pit stops for that second stage break, Suarez inherited the lead and led for the next 21 laps before yielding to Brad Keselowski for three laps before reassuming the lead on lap 85 and leading until the checkered flag. Meanwhile, Elliott would get stuck in traffic running seventh with 25 laps remaining and would finish eighth while Larson was really mired in 17th with 25 left and would only pick up two more spots before the end of the event. 

One of the final hallmarks of the 2022 race was how clean it was, a continual theme of racing at Sonoma. Unlike most road courses on the NASCAR calendar, Sonoma lacks a turn-one waiting to collect half the field. Sonoma’s turn one is more of a casual left hander while it’s final turn is the hairpin turn that could be a potential issue. However, by the time the field gets to that 12th turn, the bulk of the drivers have gotten so spaced apart that turn 12 becomes more of a spot to pass via braking a fellow driver instead of a spot to dump someone like the Indianapolis Road Course. This is all to say, if a driver experiences an issue like a flat tire or mechanical issue, its highly unlikely they’ll get the benefit of a caution flag to help get them back with the field — especially now as NASCAR doesn’t throw caution flags for stage breaks. 

Expectations for the Toyota/Save Mart 350

That final aspect is what we should really focus on as per this Sunday. With no stage breaks, combined with a race that is generally green, Sonoma should really boil down to two basic factors. 

The first being driver performance at road courses as Sonoma should force the cream to the top. Starting atop the grid will be important as the last time a driver who started outside the top 15 won at Sonoma was Kyle Busch back in 2008. In between those thirteen races, only twice did a driver who started 11th through 14th win the race. Thus, we know that starting high increases a driver’s opportunity to win, but having skill and the proper equipment is the skeleton key that unlocks a win. 

Second, much like what we saw unfolding at COTA, with no stage breaks to bunch the field back together, we should see a plethora of drivers attempt to “race backward” and setup pit stops to put them in line to end the race toward the end of a fuel run. COTA was set up for this scenario but with five cautions (extending the race a full extra six laps) at laps 58, 61, 66, 69 and 72 the fuel strategy game went out the window. 

Sunday, this strategy should be on full display, especially from drivers like Chase Briscoe, AJ Allmendinger, Chase Elliott, Michael McDowell, Austin Cindric and Justin Haley — all accomplished road racers who find themselves in a growing points hole as the regular season winds down toward the playoffs.