Five to Watch: Johnson eyes Hollywood ending at Fontana

FONTANA, Calif. -- The NASCAR Cup Series continues its West Coast swing on the outskirts of the bright lights of Hollywood with Sunday's Auto Club 400 (3:30 p.m. ET on FOX/FOX Sports App, MRN, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). The 2-mile track is a test of how well drivers and crew chiefs can manage tires with a surface that is among the roughest in NASCAR. Check out these key story lines to watch on Sunday.

Hollywood ending: With six victories at Auto Club Speedway, Jimmie Johnson is the all-time winningest driver at the track. The California native got his first of 83 Cup wins to date in 2002 and he holds the best average finish (7.6), most laps led (980) and has completed every single Cup lap (5,706 of 5,706 laps) in races he's run at this venue. He'll start on the front row next to pole sitter Clint Bowyer. His wife and daughters are serving as the honorary starters for Sunday's race at his home track, so what would one more win here mean to legendary driver of the No. 48?



"It would be insane," Johnson said on Friday. "Home track, first win, you could just go down the list of meaningful talking points that could come out of it. The way last weekend went with the speed that we had in our Hendrick cars and the way mine drove, I'm very optimistic about this weekend and it would just be incredible to pull that off if we could."

What's up with JGR?: A year after winning 19 races and opening the 2020 season with Denny Hamlin being victorious at the Daytona 500, the Joe Gibbs Racing fleet seems to be in a funk on non-superspeedways to start the season. Martin Truex Jr. had speed at Las Vegas, but no Toyota finished better than 15th. Flip forward to Saturday's qualifying session where defending race winner Kyle Busch was the best Gibbs qualifier in 17th. Hamlin (P28), Erik Jones (P29) and Truex (P38) will come from the back half of the field. Truex failed pre-qualifying inspection three times and was unable to turn a qualifying lap as a result.

"Everyone else continues to develop, you definitely don't sit still," Hamlin said. "No team really sits still."

"We're obviously behind as far as speed and race-ability right now. It's just going to take time. Chevy has a new body and it's doing pretty well for them. We are just behind right now," Jones said.

Penske power
: When it comes to Fontana, the Team Penske trio of Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski and Ryan Blaney show up strong. Over the past three races at Fontana, Keselowski and Logano rank 1-2 in average finish and Blaney is a solid sixth. Each driver also carries a top-10 streak at this track into Sunday's race: Blaney-3, Keselowski-5 (with a win in 2015) and Logano-5. They have fired off well to start 2020 albeit with new crew chiefs for each team -- Logano won at Las Vegas, Blaney has been up front late in both races and Keselowski nabbed a seventh-place finish at Vegas. Logano and Blaney were 1-2 on the 15-lap average board in Friday’s final practice. For the 2018 Cup champion in particular, this is one race he'd like to get after several near misses.



"We are consistently in the top five here the last few times," Logano said. "We have been close multiple times. We were leading on the last lap one time. We have been right there, we just haven't crossed the line first yet. ... I still look at it as one of our best tracks even if we don't have a win. We have been close, we just haven't cut it yet."

Fontana favorite: Fresh off a solid Las Vegas run, Alex Bowman came out with blistering speed at Fontana. The driver of the No. 88 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet topped both of Friday's practice sessions and finished third in qualifying for Sunday’s race. The strong showing ahead of the race comes at a track where he has not finished better than 13th in four tries.

"I'm just really confident about how our car is going to race," Bowman said. "Obviously on the long runs our car was really good yesterday."

The speed has caught the attention of 2004 champion Kurt Busch ahead of qualifying.

"You got to beat the 88 right now," Busch said matter of factly.

Bowman and Busch (starting P4) are two of five Chevrolets starting in the top 10 on Sunday.

Getting all you can: As we saw in Las Vegas last weekend, restarts in general were wild. But when you come to Fontana, that is even more true. The seams on the track play a role with how a driver will cross them and it's been noted how they add to the character of the track. At Fontana, tire falloff will make how much ground you gain on a restart a little bit of a double-edged sword: Do you want to be strong early in the run or save your tires for later?

"You can be very aggressive on restarts and really gain a lot, but you also can hurt yourself after a couple of laps it you used up your tires so you have to find the happy medium," Austin Dillon said. "You might let a guy go at the start of a run and then you can see him come backwards."

The multiple lanes Fontana offers simply add to the chaos -- including the possibility of trouble.

"You get on a track with five lanes on it like California, there's going to be a guy in every one of them," 2018 Fontana winner Martin Truex Jr. said. "... Last year, we got wrecked here on the very first restart. Pretty much ruined our day. Same thing happened last week. You have to try to watch out for the dumbasses out there. It's pretty difficult to do sometimes."