The teams that comprise the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series will be found in the wine country of northern California this weekend at the Infineon Raceway. Sunday’s Toyota/Sav Mart 350 will see the teams taking on one of the most challenging road courses in the country. The track is demanding on the cars especially on the brakes. It’s also a physical challenge for the drivers that often attacks their levels of patience especially during the waning laps of the race. As always this race is loaded with special guest drivers, known as “road course ringers”, who have expertise in the ability to turn both left and right.
THE RACE BREAKDOWN
The Toyota/Sav Mart 350, measured in kilometers, is actually 218.9 miles/110 laps around a 1.99 mile road course with ten turns.
The track opened in 1968.
The first NASCAR Sprint Cup race was held there in 1989.
The track presently can seat 47,000 but has plenty of hillside space for lawn chair spectators.
The race has 46 entries vying for the $5.6 million total purse.
There are 11 teams outside of NASCAR’s top 35 in owner’s points, aka the “go or go home” list, who will have to qualify their way into the race on speed.
The 2008 defending race champion is Kyle Busch in the Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota.
Click Here to View More NASCAR Photos
But it’s Hendrick Motorsport’s Jeff Gordon who rules the stats at this track. Gordon tops the list with 5 wins and 5 poles. He also holds the record for the most laps led, 92, by a race winner.
Because of Gordon’s stats Chevrolet tops the manufacturer’s win list with nine.
Infineon Raceway has two track qualifying records due to reconfiguration that occurred in 2005. Rusty Wallace set the qualifying record, on the old course layout, in 2000 with a speed of 99.309 MPH. Jeff Gordon holds the record, for the modern day layout, set in 2005 at 94.325 MPH.
An Infineon Raceway event has it fair share of caution flags. The record is nine set in 1990. The fewest amount of cautions was four back in 2002. But it needs to be pointed that these are full course cautions. Local yellows, used frequently in road course racing, is an entirely different set of numbers.
A VERY IMPORTANT RACE FACTOR
The double file restart policy, recently established by NASCAR, may turn out to be most interesting on this road course. The new restart rule has been extremely successful in the last two races and the fans love it. However this Sunday the double file restarts, while heading into a left hand turn followed by a sharp right hander, could become a huge factor in the outcome of the race.
A RACE FACTOR THAT’S NOT AS IMPORTANT AS IT USED TO BE.
That would be the presence of the road course ringers. There are seven of them entered into the Infineon race featuring well known road course names such as Boris Said and Ron Fellows. Back in the day these ringers were hired by NASCAR teams because their skills in this form of racing far exceeded those of the team’s regular drivers.
That theory doesn’t seem to be as effective today as it used to be. There may be two basic reasons for this. First, is the availability of the high quality road course driving schools all over the country. Many of the modern day Sprint Cup drivers have attended these schools over the years. The second reason is the young group of drivers in the Sprint Cup that began their racing careers as young children. Many of these drivers started in kart racing. In that particular world road courses are often a major part of that racing format.
It also needs to be pointed out that nearly all of the road course ringers, in Sunday’s race, are driving for teams on the “go or go home” list. The lone exception is road race veteran Patrick Carpentier who will be subbing for Michael Waltrip.
However there are a few Sprint Cup regulars who came from road racing series who will bear watching. The names Juan Pablo Montoya, Robby Gordon, Marcus Ambrose and Scott Speed immeadiately comes to mind.
THE VEGAS REPORT
The latest line for the Las Vegas based World Sports Exchange, WSE, indicates no real suprise that Kyle Busch tops the rankings at 5 to 1 odds to win at Infineon.
Another rather interesting wager might be series’ points leader Tony Stewart who is rated at 11 to 2.
Jeff Gordon, who leads all of the major categories connected to this race, comes in at 6 to 2 as does former road racing veteran Juan Pablo Montoya.
From that point the WSE doesn’t seem to be confident about some of the other driver ratings such as Kurt Busch and Kevin Harvick set at 16 and 18 to 1 respectively.
The same sentiment applies to the quartet of Mark Martin, Ron Fellows, Denny Hamlin and Jimmie Johnson set at 20 to 1.
There’s not a lot of optimism for drivers Greg Biffle, Jamie McMurray, Ryan Newman and Patrick Carpentier at 25 to 1 and it’s the same sentiment for Clint Bowyer, Carl Edwards and Kasey Kahne at 30 to 1.
Now brace yourself members of the Junior Nation because this one is going to hurt. The WSE has ranked fan favorite Dale Earnhardt Jr at 40 to 1 this Sunday.
| 
|