This Sunday, NASCAR heads out west to wine country. Find out who will struggle, who will run up front and who you need to finally pass on!
Who’s ready to turn right? That’s right, this coming weekend features the first road course race of the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season at Sonoma Raceway! With hills, curves and esses, Sonoma is bound to give us a fun Sunday afternoon.
Personally, I love road course racing with stock cars because the cars aren’t built for this style of competition. The race weekend at Sonoma is one of my favorite race weekends of the year. With that, I’m going to kickoff the fun with some predictions for the 2018 Toyota/Save Mart 350!
#5 – Kasey Kahne scores season-high finish
Kasey Kahne has had a rough season to say the least. The transition to Leavine Family Racing had the appearance of being a game changer for Kahne and the team, but the results have yet to show this. The new combination have struggled to find luck in 2018.
Heading into Sonoma, Kahne has ZERO finishes inside the top 15. In fact, the team’s best finish is 17th place, which has occurred three different times this season. My intuition tells me Kahne will best that this weekend in wine country and score a season-high finish.
Looking at Kahne’s history at the 1.99-mile road course, he has scored six top 10 finishes in 14 starts. While his first five starts at Sonoma landed him a 31.8 average finish, his last nine starts paint a completely different picture. His big turnaround started in 2009 when he won his first career Cup Series road course race at the track while driving for Richard Petty Motorsports.
Including the win, Kahne has finished in 10th place or better in six of his last nine starts at Sonoma. All things considered, I believe he will have a shot at a solid finish on Sunday. This team need to finish in 16th or better to reach their season-high, and Kahne’s experience could go a long way to accomplishing that goal. With a new crew chief on the box, he could finally have enough spark to run toward the front of the field.