NASCAR Sonoma Recap: Almirola, Truex Win at Sonoma

NASCAR took its annual trip to Napa Valley out in California as the Cup Series and Xfinity Series took on the twists and turns of Sonoma Raceway.

Aric Almirola was given the opportunity to run the Xfinity Series race at Sonoma and it was all worth it for him, as he went on to score the win with RSS Racing, which was using a car prepped by Stewart Haas Racing. This marks Almirola’s fourth career Xfinity Series win and first since 2017 when he won at Daytona. This also marks the first-ever win for Georgia-based RSS Racing, a team run by Ryan Sieg that he also drives for alongside his brother Kyle. 

Almirola finished ahead of AJ Allmendinger and Kyle Larson, as he took the lead on a lap 65 restart.

“Oh, man, this is so special,” said Almirola in his post-race interview. “It’s hard to explain. I know it’s an Xfinity win – it’s not a Cup win, but after COTA, (I said) I don’t think I should run any more road course races in an Xfinity car.”

“It makes me look like a wanker, and I lose self-confidence going into Sunday. But I knew that this racetrack, this is one that I can run good at. I’ve run good here my whole career. I don’t know what it is about this place, but I love racing here.”

However, Kyle Larson had the dominant car all race long, sweeping both stages. It wasn’t until lap 60 when Jeffrey Earnhardt wrecked into the tire barrier, bringing out the second caution of the race, that caused issues for Larson. Before that caution, he had a 60-second lead over AJ Allmendinger. 

On lap 72, Larson’s car got tight in the turn 11 hairpin after trying to make a move to get around Almirola. This caused Allmendinger to pass Larson for second.

“I just got too greedy,” said Larson, who led a race-high of 53 laps. “I was kind of tucked up right behind him, clipped the tires, and it knocked the wheel out of my hands. After that, the toe was off. I was really tight in the left and really loose in the right, so I couldn’t make runs at it.”

“I’m really mad at myself right now, but I’m really proud of the car they (Hendrick Motorsports) brought. Congrats to Aric, too. He did a really good job out in front of me, hitting his marks. He could kind of get away from me in a couple of important areas and would make me have to work hard behind him. So, hats off to him and that team.”

Moving over to the Cup Series race, it was Martin Truex Jr. scoring his fourth win at Sonoma, ten years after scoring his first back in 2013 when he drove for Michael Waltrip Racing. Truex scored his second win of the season and led for a race-high of 51 laps in the 110-lap race. Truex is also one away from tying Jeff Gordon’s win total at the 1.99-mile road course. 

“Hats off to my team,” said Truex. “To be so bad here last year and to come back and do that with the same car basically, it’s really unbelievable. Just proud of them. We’re having a great year. I feel really good about our team.”

“Man, it just feels incredible to have a day like that and a run like that and a team like I have. They’re doing everything right, and it’s a lot of fun to drive these cars … This is why you go through years like we had last year. You just keep fighting. You never give up on it. You always believe in each other.”

Truex’s teammate, Denny Hamlin, won the pole for the race and led for the first 32 laps of the race, winning stage one as both he and Truex were looking like the class of the field. Hamlin lost the lead early into stage 2 and would later crash out on lap 92, resulting in a 36th-place finish.

Kyle Busch, who won at World Wide Technology Raceway last weekend, came close to a fourth win of the season but was unable to catch Truex in the closing laps.

“We gave it everything that we had. We made a lot of changes. We got a lucky break there with a yellow with only three laps on tires, so we were able to kind of cycle to the front.” Busch said. “Once we got up there, we could maintain pace with some of the good cars and have a good top-three-speed race car. Just kind of flip-flopped the race a little bit.”

“Good fortunes for us. Nice to come out here with a P2 after a win last week.”

Joey Logano finished third, Chris Buescher finished fourth, and Chase Elliott finished out the top five. AJ Allmendinger, Michael McDowell, Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell, and Ross Chastain. Grant Enfinger made his Cup Series debut in the No. 42 for Legacy Motor Club finishing in 26th, after Noah Gragson suffered concussion-like symptoms after his hard crash last week in St. Louis.

NASCAR is off for the next weekend, then all three series head to Nashville Superspeedway.