SONOMA, Calif. – Any concerns about Toyota struggling on road courses have expired after Martin Truex Jr.’s dominant win at Sonoma Raceway Sunday afternoon.
The 2017 NASCAR Cup Series champion led 51 of 110 laps for his fourth career win at the Bay Area road course and second victory of the season. That part wasn’t surprising.
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But after Toyota’s dismal performance on road courses at the beginning of the Next Gen era one year ago, the improvements in 2023 have been striking. The manufacturer is now 2-for-2 this year, with 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick stomping the competition at Circuit of The Americas in March before Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin won the Sonoma pole ahead of teammate Truex’s victory. Quite the turnaround from last year’s trip to Napa Valley, when Toyota’s highest-finishing driver was Kurt Busch (18th).
“When we came here last year, it’s probably one of the worst races we’ve had at our race team,” Joe Gibbs said Sunday. “We just really struggled. We got off to a slow start all of last year, as everybody knows. I think really what happened, what I’m proud of, as the year went, I felt like we got a little better, little better, little better, little better.”
Indeed, fellow JGR driver Christopher Bell was victorious on the final road course of 2022, the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval, but he only led the final two laps that afternoon in a surprising walk-off win that propelled him through to the Round of 8 in the NASCAR Playoffs.
But last year’s Sonoma performance was jarring, particularly seeing then-three-time winner Truex struggle to a 26th-place finish.
“We had some issues last year that we’d show up at road courses, and we would kind of outsmart ourselves where we’re trying to, like, reinvent the wheel,” Truex said, “come up with some super-crazy trick setup because we knew our cars were not as good as the other manufacturers. So we shot ourselves in the foot a few times, and here was one of them, for sure. Like we came here and completely disregarded everything we know about this track thinking it was a new car, and it’s going to be different, and we ran terrible, and it was like, ‘OK, that was dumb. We’re idiots.'”
But JGR, one of the sport’s winningest teams, didn’t shy away from the challenge. As the team worked to learn through last year’s new vehicles, the manufacturer came into 2023 with a new nose that helped alleviate some of the issues that plagued them on the twisty road courses.
“I think some of the changes with the aero package helped us. It fixed what potentially we thought were some of our weaknesses,” said James Small, crew chief for Truex’s No. 19 Toyota. “We have a better understanding of the car on road courses now and what we need. We were having to do things last year that were so out of the box to try and make the car do things in certain areas that we thought it needed to do. Now everything just makes more sense. We don’t seem so stupid anymore.”
The competition has taken notice as well. Kyle Busch, who spent 15 years driving for Joe Gibbs Racing through the 2022 season, has finished second on both road courses this year in the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet. He closed the gap to Truex on occasion late in Sunday’s race but never enough to challenge for the lead.
“The Toyotas were terrible on road courses last year, and here they are kicking our butt. I guess just get Kyle out, and you guys will be OK,” Busch said with a laugh. “No, I’m kidding. But they’ve gone to work and done their homework and have done a good job. So with this lower downforce aero package, we’ve got our work cut out for us, and that’s kind of been our Achilles’ heel, but at least we’ve gotten two seconds at road courses with it.”
Bell was never quite as strong as teammates Truex or Hamlin, who led 33 laps from the pole before crashing out of contention, but the No. 20 Toyota came home with a ninth-place finish to back up the overall improved showing from the manufacturer Sunday.
“Yeah, tremendously better,” Bell said. “The whole Toyota group was a lot stronger than last year. I’m proud of the effort from those guys, and I’m proud of this 20 group. I felt like, at times, we deserved better than a ninth, and then at times, we didn’t deserve ninth. We got some good stage points and a top-10 in our Rheem Camry, and we will move on to Nashville.”