This weekend is round 16 of the Sprint Cup season and is the first of two road course races the drivers will take laps on. It will bring around a couple of different faces and some strange twists during the action.
Track description: Sonoma Raceway is a road course in Sonoma, California. The track is 1.99 miles long. It has ten turns including a complete 180 degree turn, turn nine. The track is made of asphalt. The track record for Sonoma was set in 2012 by Marcos Ambrose with a speed of 95.262 miles per hour, a time of 1:15.203. Jeff Gordon has the most wins at Sonoma with five. The drivers will take 350 scheduled miles around Sonoma for 110 laps.
Favorites: Hendrick Motorsports is on a tear as of late, winning five straight races. Jeff Gordon is the only one of those three drivers who has real success with road courses though. Gordon is a strong pick to win. Also look for Marcos Ambrose. Ambrose has a strong road racing background in his homeland of Australia. His only two Sprint Cup wins came on a road course, and he suffered a heart breaking defeat at Sonoma in 2010 when he was penalized for being off pace under caution. other favorites include Tony Stewart, Brad Keselowski, Kyle Busch, and Kasey Kahne.
Prediction: Look for Hendrick Motorsports to win it's sixth straight race this Sunday, but not with the driver you'd imagine. Kasey Kahne is the only driver in Hendrick Motorsports who hasn't won this season. Look for that to change on Sunday once the checkered flag waves.
Things to be sure of: Road course ringers. They're the drivers that typically do very well on road courses and are called up just to give a team owner a good finish. Although over the years, Sprint Cup regulars have caught up to the ringers, they still play a huge roll in how you strategize to run a race, knowing that a pure road racer knows how to get around the track.