Some Thoughts on Infineon
The next Sprint Cup Series race will be held at the Infineon Raceway in Sonoma as NASCAR runs the Toyota/SaveMart 350. The Sprint Cup standings are close at this point with the top drivers looking like this.
Standings
1) Tony Stewart 2189
2) Jeff Gordon 2142
3) Jimme Johnson 2047
4) Kurt Bush 1961
5) Ryan Newman 1934
The next five drivers are separated from the top by 262 to 340 points. In 15 starts, which is not quite the halfway point in this series, the field is tight. Jimmie Johnson has won the last three Sprint Cup Championships, and he’s in the hunt again.
Infineon is special because it is only one of two road courses on the Sprint Cup schedule. The other one is Watkins Glen. There are guys who are brought in to drive the road courses—specialists in making tight turns and finding the advantage on short stretches of track. Some of the vet road warriors are guys like Ron Fellows, Max Papis and Brian Simo. But these drivers rarely win. They’re competitive and some will end up in the top 10, but it’s rare that one of these specialists gets to take the victory lap and relish the victory circle.
The best road warrior in the field is Jeff Gordon. Presently, Gordon sits in second-place for the Sprint Cup Series season standings. No driver in the field has won more road course races. Gordon has been victorious in nine road races—five times at Infineon and four times at Watkins Glen. Tony Stewart, who right now leads Gordon by 47 points, is second best with six road course wins. Will this race come down to these two guys?
Infineon is 1.99 miles long with 12 turns. Jimmie Johnson has never won at Infineon. Last year Kyle Bush won the race. Because road race courses have so may turns and the straightaways are much shorter than those on the superspeedways, top speeds are about half of what you’ll find on the bigger, straighter courses. The Talladega Superspeedway record is 212 miles per hour, while the top speed recorded at Infineon is 99 miles per hour. The average speed at Infineon is 90 miles per hour.
Here’s the results of the last five road races at Infineon:
6/22/08 Kyle Bush
6/24/07 Juan Montoya
6/25/06 Jeff Gordon
6/26/05 Tony Stewart
6/27/04 Jeff Gordon
Here’s how I think Infineon will go this year. Looking at the field, this year Stewart in 15 starts has one win, seven top five finishes and 11 top ten endings. Gordon has one victory, eight top five and 10 to 10. Obviously, both are primed to win. Johnson is 2-6-9 and Kyle Bush, last year’s winner, is at 3-4-5. He’s tied with Mark Martin, who is in eighth-place, for most wins this season.
This race comes down to Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon and Kyle Bush with two wild cards in the mix—Juan Montoya and Marcos Ambrose. Montoya, who is 14th in the standings, won this race in 2007 and finished sixth the only other time that he ran Infineon.
Ambrose is a road course expert and has won Watkins Glen. Last year he held the seventh start spot at Infineon but was forced out of the race by transmission problems. Bush has the patience and skill to win this race. Stewart has two wins on this course with the last coming in 2005. Gordon was third last year on this course and has won it two of the last five years. He’s been victorious five of the last 10 times at Infineon.
I’m going with Jeff Gordon. He’s driving exceptionally well, the guy has a great feel for this course and he’s about as competitive as can be. Look for him to overtake Stewart in this race and the Sprint Cup Series standings.
The next race on the circuit will be the Lenox Industrial Tools 301 at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon. That’s about 20 minutes from my house. It will be cool if these guys are exchanging first and second place in the standings as they visit Loudon for the first or two times this season.
Road courses are a bump in the road for some NASCAR drivers and a way for others to accelerate towards the top of the standings.
The race will be run at 4:30 ET Sunday and is on TNT.
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Tags: Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart
