Viking Motorsports scores pair of top fives at Sonoma; first for Alfredo in two years

SONOMA, Calif. — The rolling hills of Sonoma Raceway were a climb conquered by Viking Motorsports' Anthony Alfredo and Parker Retzlaff as they netted top-five finishes in Saturday's O'Reilly Auto Parts Series race. While Shane van Gisbergen made light work of the field with a dominant victory at the 1.99-mile road course north of the San Francisco Bay, the Nos. 96 and 99 Chevrolets put up scrappy performances in the final stage, dueling with Joe Gibbs Racing's Brent Crews and Taylor Gray to come out with fourth and fifth place on the results sheet when the checkered flag flew. It's the first top five for Alfredo in the O'Reilly Series since Michigan in 2024. RELATED: Race results | At-track photos: Sonoma "This top five has been a long time coming for our team, but we just never gave up, right?" Alfredo said. "When things weren't going our way, or we didn't execute right, we built on it, got better and kept going back to the drawing board. The last seven weeks have been really good for us. We put together good races, execution's been great, trying to control what we can control and that's all you can really do. Executing the fundamentals and now racing up front and fine-tuning things to compete for top fives and wins is awesome." Formed in 2024, Viking Motorsports began its O'Reilly journey with Matt DiBenedetto. With flashes of speed over its first two years and a shift to Chevrolet in 2025, the organization expanded to two cars in 2026 and signed Retzlaff and Alfredo to continue to build on what they started. The addition of Retzlaff may arguably go down as the series' offseason move of the year, as the 23-year-old wheelman collected his third top five of the campaign and sits ninth in points after Sonoma, 61 points above the Chase cutline. "I'm glad we got a double top five today," Retzlaff said. "It's people in good management spots, making good decisions and giving me and Anthony and both these teams a chance to show who we are and the stuff we can do." Over the last two weeks, Viking's road-course program has been sensational. Both Alfredo and Retzlaff were in positions for a win last weekend at Naval Base Coronado before a multicar crash ended Alfredo's day, and Retzlaff ran out of fuel before a scheduled stop. Retzlaff recovered to finish seventh in San Diego. "It's great because for both cars that have similar pace, qualify together up front, race up front, is what we've got to do to build and get better," Alfredo said. "My teammate and I, our crew chiefs, just everyone can go back to the shop and work together to get those last few spots and win a race. I'd say it's a big testament to everybody's efforts and pretty incredible what we've accomplished in such a short amount of time. "It feels really good to be putting good days together, especially on a road course, because it's taken me a while to figure this stuff out, but I've just put my head down and gone to work and been competitive at it the last couple of weeks, which has been really fun. To win my first stage on one is kind of crazy, but I knew we had the pace to do it." MORE: O'Reilly Series standings  Dropping as low as 21st in the O'Reilly standings twice this season, Alfredo mentioned the growing pains of the No. 96 team as it still stood as an idea. Viking scrambled to quickly assemble resources for Alfredo's entry over the offseason, while the core of the No. 99 team was already established. Since finishing 12th at Texas Motor Speedway, Alfredo has slowly climbed to 16th in points with three top 10s in the last seven races. While Retzlaff is growing comfortable toward a postseason berth and Alfredo is still looking to shave off a 100-plus-point deficit to get near Chase territory, the teammates are finding a home with a team that's working to get the best out of them. The two previously experienced multiple years of clawing for consistency with underfunded organizations. And now with just five races remaining in the regular season, those gains are finally bearing fruit. "We've had similar experiences and raced with similar teams towards the back of the field or the middle of the field," Alfredo said. "For both of us to have an opportunity to showcase our talent is something neither of us take for granted, and we're pushing each other to be better, and so are our teams. I think that's the biggest thing -- the culture of Viking Motorsports is second to none. "It's just been phenomenal to experience something where we might go compete once the green flag dropped, but we'll go back to the shop now and I'll figure out how to get those next few spots to win, and that's what it takes at this level of competition is teamwork, and it's really fun to be a part of having that."