SONOMA, Calif. - Martin Truex Jr.’s No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry was dominant all day long in wine country as he led a race-high 51 laps en route to his fourth career victory in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway and 33rd win in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Truex Jr. earned 53 points after finishing second in Stage 1 and seventh in Stage 2.
Sonoma was also his second points-paying win of 2023 after going winless last season. Truex Jr. got his first win of the season last month at Dover Motor Speedway.
“You know, just a lot of hard work by everybody, everybody at Toyota, TRD, JGR in the off-season to kind of redesign,” Truex Jr. said. “We’re having a great year. I feel really good about our team… We couldn’t do this without all of our partners, all of our fans.
"Man, feels incredible to have a day like that, a run like that, a team like I have. They’re doing everything right right now and it’s a lot of fun to drive these cars.”
Truex Jr.’s former teammate Kyle Busch finished second at Sonoma en route to his second straight top-two finish in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Heading into an off-weekend, Busch said in a post-race interview that he wishes there wasn’t an off-weekend coming up because of the momentum the No. 8 team has created over the past few weeks.
“Great job by all the guys on this McLaren Grills Camaro, just proud of the effort,” Busch said. “We gave it everything that we had, we made a lot of changes. We got a lucky break there with a yellow with only three laps on tires, so we were able to kind of cycle to the front. Once we got up there, we could maintain pace with some of the good cars and have a good top-three speed race car.”
Results from the 2023 Toyota/Save Mart 350 are listed below.
OTHER RACE FACTS
Martin Truex Jr.’s victory makes him the overall points leader for the first time in the Next Gen era.
Chris Buescher now has seven straight top-10 finishes on road courses in the NASCAR Cup Series after his fourth-place finish at Sonoma.
"Everybody did a good job," Buescher said. "Our Fifth Third Bank Mustang had really solid speed on the day. It was a methodical race. I thought we were in a good spot there at the end and got a little caught up in the retaliation stuff going on right in front of us and checked us up a good amount.
"I don’t know. It’s hard to say if we had anything for the 19. We never quite got to him today, so I think we still have a little work to do yet, but it was a good job by everybody.”
The top seven drivers in points are just 32 points apart, which is the closest margin in NASCAR history through 16 races, according to statistician Trey Ryan.
GRID Ranking
The 2023 GRID Ranking is the seventh year of the world's premier motorsport ranking and was initially released on Sunday, April 2.
Drivers in the seven racing series participating in the ranking (NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1, Formula E, World Rally Championship, Repco Supercars, MotoGP) have earned GRID Ratings, which helped determine their seeding during Week 10 of the 2023 GRID Ranking.
DRIVER | OLD RATING | PREVIOUS RANKING | MOST RECENT FINISH | NEW RATING | NEW RANKING |
William Byron | 13.44 | 7th | 14th | 12.60 | 12th |
Kyle Busch | 10.75 | 18th | 2nd | 11.70 | 16th |
Kyle Larson | 10.56 | 21st | 8th | 10.26 | 24th |
Joey Logano | N/A | N/A | 3rd | 9.54 | 29th |
Martin Truex Jr. | N/A | N/A | 2n | 9.54 | 30th |
Week 11 of the GRID Ranking:
The NASCAR Cup Series is finally getting an off-weekend and they will return to action on Sunday, June 25 from Nashville Superspeedway. Coverage for the Ally 400 will begin at 7 p.m. ET on NBC.
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