SONOMA, Calif. – Sonoma Raceway’s premium on-track position already makes Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350 (3:30 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) a strategic challenge. Add the opening round of the NASCAR In-Season Challenge, and teams are balancing the pursuit of a race win with the need to finish ahead of their bracket opponent and advance.
Depending on who you ask, some teams are paying significant attention to their In-Season Challenge competition while others are trying to call the best strategy possible for the result to take care of itself. Ultimately, the field will be chopped in half after 110 circuits around the Napa Valley road course.
Ty Dillon was last year’s Cinderella, starting the knockout-style tournament as the last driver in. Through carnage, chaos and four consecutive top-20 finishes, he advanced all the way to the final round, pinned against Ty Gibbs at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He became Denny Hamlin’s nemesis in the first round, as the two drivers will reunite in the bracket again one year later.
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“I know we’re the [31st] seed, but I think if we perform to our expectations that we know we can do, we execute cleanly, we can beat anyone – including Denny Hamlin,” Andrew Dickeson, crew chief for Ty Dillon’s No. 10 car, told NASCAR.com on Saturday morning. “Last year was good, and it gave us a lot of positive attention and put us in the spotlight a bit, but didn’t change our approach.
“It was good to get the guys some credit for their hard work that they do, and it went our way. I think Sonoma was the highlight for me when we passed [Alex Bowman] on the last lap.”
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“The intermediates are hard against the Toyotas because they are so good right now,” Dickeson added. “The road courses a variable. [At San Diego], we were passing good cars, including Denny, up until the point of contact with the wall. If we have a clean race, there is no one we can’t outrun.”
Others within the garage are focused on their own race. After an erratic opening three months of the season, Chase Briscoe has leaped seven positions in the driver standings over the last handful of races. The No. 19 Toyota is a perennial contender at Sonoma, with Briscoe placing runner-up to a dominant Shane van Gisbergen last season.
James Small, leader of the No. 19 bunch and fellow Aussie, has had Sonoma success galore dating back to his days as the lead engineer for Martin Truex Jr. with Furniture Row Racing. In six starts with Truex – four as a crew chief – the future Hall of Famer piled three victories and was in position to place big in 2024 until running out of fuel in the closing laps.
Briscoe has a challenging Sonoma matchup, needing to finish ahead of three-time road-course winner AJ Allmendinger.
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“Of all the people to start the first round, he has got a lot of laps here and has been exceptional here in the past,” Small stated. “If we do what we’ve done in previous years, it should be OK. In terms of the race, for me, I’m not sitting there thinking, ‘How am I going to beat this guy in the In-Season Challenge?’ At least through the first few rounds, it’s more about trying to maximize our race and the amount of points we’re getting. If we put ourselves in a position to win, that will take care of itself.”
The nuances of Sonoma specifically make for a tricky opening week of the In-Challenge Tournament. Since the 1.99-mile, 11-turn course got repaved before the 2024 season, track position has been of the utmost importance. Each trip back, however, has led to more tire falloff over the course of a run, and with added horsepower this season, the wear rate could be even greater with the cars more difficult to drive.
“It’s more of a track-position dominated race, trying to manage your gaps with strategy and keep your car up front in clean air,” Small noted. “Even last year, you saw comers and goers; guys that went hard initially and destroyed their stuff and would fall off. It’s still something that you have to be very conscious of and manage, and do the best you can.”
Briscoe will share the fourth row with Allmendinger at the green flag. Dillon qualified 31st, 22 positions behind Hamlin.