NASCAR Cup Series

Many unknowns lurk at every turn on road course at Sonoma

Published Jun. 22, 2014 10:05 a.m. ET

Tom Jensen

This is the spot where we usually make some bold prediction about the expected winner of the day's upcoming race, the driver or drivers who seemingly have the field covered.

But heading into this afternoon's Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway, the outlook is murky at best. There are no clear-cut favorites, either in terms of specific drivers or teams in general. In fact, the numbers paint a jumbled picture:

Sonoma has had nine consecutive different winners.

The last seven Sonoma winners had never won a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series road race before.

The top three qualifiers at Sonoma -- Jamie McMurray, AJ Allmendinger and Kyle Larson -- are winless this season. In fact, neither the 'Dinger nor the hotshot rookie Larson have ever won a Sprint Cup points race.

All told, eight of the top 12 starters today are winless this season.

Want some other statistical anomalies?

Danica Patrick outqualified all four Hendrick Motorsports drivers and all three Joe Gibbs Racing drivers.

In fact, neither Hendrick, winners of five consecutive races, nor Gibbs, had any of its drivers qualify in the top 12.

The top 22 qualifiers all broke the existing track record.

Clint Bowyer, who was second in Friday's opening practice and fastest in Happy Hour, qualified 25th.

So what do we know for sure heading into the first road race of the Sprint Cup season?

Tire management will be critical. The combination of a larger rear spoiler this year and no minimum ride height has added a lot of rear downforce. And around the 1.99-mile Sonoma road course, it's wearing the two rear tires out like never before.

"I think new tires are going to be big and I think having good rear grip on the long runs is going to be big," said five-time Sonoma winner Jeff Gordon, the only driver to win more than twice here. Gordon qualified 15th.

Pit stop strategy wide open. In the past here, the debate was always whether to try and go the race distance on two stops or three. With rear-tire wear so high, that could be out the window.

"I'd say we'll be putting on more tires and wearing tires out quicker here this weekend than what I can remember in the past," said Kasey Kahne, who qualified 30th.

"Tires are so important, more important than ever," pole-sitter McMurray added. "Every time we go to a road course, we run backwards. Everyone pits 10 laps before they can make it on fuel hoping you are going to see some cautions, but I think you will see guys putting tires on (today). Should be a good race."

Tempers will flare. The longer the race goes on, the more impatient drivers will get. It happens every year, and it's only gotten worse with the advent of double-file restarts.

"I think everyone starts with the right attitude and then at the end all manners are out the window and it's all about just getting those positions," said Joey Logano, one of the drivers who has been fast all weekend. "There are four or five people that are pretty calm that might not have a mark on their race car because everyone else is gonna get beat around and when you get beat around you get ticked off. It happens."

Track position is everything. If you're not near the front at Sonoma, you're in deep trouble. "Once you get a couple of rows back ... there are just a lot of ways to get yourself in trouble by something you aren't even doing," Larson said. "Hopefully we get through the first couple of corners clean, and then you can kind of single-file out and really run your own pace. Once you start getting back in the middle of the pack, everybody kind of runs the same speed. It is tough to pass, it is easy to burn your tires off and make mistakes."

The race is wide open. It used to be when you came to a road course, the debate was about whether Gordon was going to win or Stewart. Not now. Nine different winners in a row is proof positive of that.

"It is a lot different than 10-15 years ago when I thought you looked at the series and said maybe there are five, or eight or ten guys at most that can win on a road course race," said second-qualifier Allmendinger. "Now it is so deep and everybody has gotten so good at road-course racing in general."

Desperate times, desperate measures. NASCAR's win-and-you're-in championship structure means any driver who wins one of the 26 Sprint Cup regular season races is virtually assured of a spot in the Chase for the Sprint Cup. And with 15 races already in the books, the chances for a winless driver to steal a victory are rapidly dwindling. If there is a winless driver -- like our top three qualifiers -- with a shot to win at the end, expect to see some aggressive pit strategy and even more aggressive driving.