sonoma

Had a great Truck Series race and made a ton of money.  Honestly, I don't have a real good handle on how the Sonoma race is going to play out, so I'm likely to play light and just bank some of the recent winnings to use in future weeks.

There's a lot of variables that add unpredictability to this race on Sunday:

• We've got a new layout that includes the carousel.  This layout takes away one of the prime passing zones coming down the hill that we've seen in recent years.
• We always see unique road course pit strategies because you can pit without losing a lap.  Once a pit window opens, most cars will come in as soon as possible out of fear a yellow flag will come out and force them behind all the cars that pitted before them under green.  One poorly timed pit call or yellow flag can upend the field.  And that adds to the chaos and the chance that the fastest cars don't finish at the top.
• Practice and qualifying results were all over the place.
• Finally, I don't like any of the lower priced options.

So who am I looking at the most?  Here's my primary target list right now:

• Kurt Busch -- Five consecutive Top 9 finishes on road courses.  In the last 15 road course races, he has 12 Top 10 finishes.  And only once in those last 15 road courses has he finished worse than 12th.  He's as solid and steady as they come on the road courses.
  
• Clint Bowyer -- In the 5 road course races since joining SHR, Clint has 4 Top 5 finishes, including a 2nd and 3rd place finish in the two Sonoma races.  In the last 15 road course races, he's got 11 Top 10 finishes and 8 Top 5 finishes.  Clint had the best 10 lap average time in final practice.
  
• Alex Bowman -- He's under priced to begin with and he finished 9th, 14th and 4th in the three road course races last year.  Alex had the second best 10 lap average time in final practice.
• Kyle Busch -- He's finished in the Top 7 in 8 of the last 9 road course races.  In the last 4 Sonoma races he has a win, two 5th place finishes and one 7th place finish.  I have no idea why his salary went down and he's now almost $1K cheaper then Harvick.
• Eric Jones -- Has three Top 10 finishes in the last four road course races.  He starts way back in 32nd and is pretty cheap, so I'm in on this.
• Landon Cassill -- For a punt play, I'll probably go all the way down to Cassill.  Hope for a finish around P30 with a +5 position difference.  I just don't think any of the other guys in the $6,500 and under range offer much value or upside so I'm going to pay almost all the way down and take a guy with no risk and some (albeit limited) upside.
• Jimmie Johnson really likes Sonoma.  In the past 10 races there, he's got 6 Top 8 finishes and no finish worse than 13th.  $8,300 is a fair price.
• Kevin Harvick starting 23rd is an interesting option.  He won this race and led 24 laps in 2017.  Last year, he finished 2nd and led 35 laps.  At his price though, it hurts what you can do elsewhere.  It's much easier to build around Kyle Busch at $10,400 then Harvick at $11,200.
  
• Martin Truex had the best car here the last two years.  In 2017, he jumped out to the lead and led a race high 25 laps before blowing a motor and finishing 37th.  Last year, he won the race and again led a race high 62 laps.  If you take out the blown motor at Sonoma in 2017, Martin has 4 Top 5 finishes in the last 6 road course races.  He's every bit on par with Kyle Busch as the best road course racer in the series.
  
• Kyle Larson -- In the last five Sonoma races, he's started from the pole twice and from inside the Top 5 all five times.  In all of those races combined, he's led a total of 11 laps.  So he's failed to capitalize on great starting spots for five consecutive races here.  Worse yet, his best finish in those five races is 12th and he's twice finished outside the Top 25.  Kyle has speed -- like he often does -- and one day he'll capitalize on that and win here.  But he's a tournament only guy for me at this time.