It’s still Sonoma Raceway but just faster and with a wall that wraps around the inside of the final turn that leads to the start-finish line.
By faster, the fresh pavement is actually producing speeds that are nearly five seconds faster than last year prior to the resurfacing. For example, Ryan Blaney was fastest in Friday practice with a best lap of 73.202 and the 2023 pole time by Denny Hamlin was 77.719.
Put a different way, 23 cars on Friday were faster than the current Cup Series track record at Sonoma, a 76.854 put down by Kevin Harvick in 2018.
Christopher Bell was the one guy made available on Friday that said it feels like a completely different track.
“No, it does not,” Bell said. “The grip level is just really different than what we’ve had in the past, and the name of the game here was managing your tires and knowing how to create grip when the tires started falling off. There is not any of that now.”
The tires are going to give up lap time a little bit over the course of a long green flag run on Sunday but it’s because of heat and not tire wear due to the smoother surface at the California road course now.
“It’s heat related and not wear,” said Chase Elliott, “At least, that’s what I felt from inside of the car. I do think you can hurt it but not because of tire wear but heat.”
Denny Hamlin echoed those sentiments.
“It’s typical kind of heat in the tires that’s kind of making it drop off a little bit in time but once it cools off it will go right back where it was,” Hamlin said.
Hamlin was amongst those that said the race track just felt like grippier faster Sonoma but still with the same cadence required to make speed.
“Not much difference,” he said. “Just you’re hitting the gas a little bit sooner, a little bit harder. It definitely feels just like the old track, just you’ve got a lot more speed.”
Elliott said pretty much the same thing.
“The cadence of the lap is the same,” Elliott said. “I feel like you’re rolling the center of the corner faster, especially in (Turn) 7 and out of (Turn) 7 and through (Turn) 11 but all the slow stuff still feels similar to the way it did before.
“To me, the cadence of the track doesn’t feel any different. I was expecting it to feel different and I watched the in-cars of the test a couple of the months and thought, man, that looks the same and when I got in the car, I kind of felt the same way.”
What about the Turn 11 wall?
The hairpin in Turn 11 traditionally featured a tire barrier around the radius but it has been replaced this weekend by a series of jersey barriers.
The reason was a response to the extreme course cutting featured at Circuit of the Americas in April but also what would be expected based on previous races with this car at Sonoma. So the wall was added to keep drivers on the track.
As Martin Truex Jr points out, it’s going to be a challenge for drivers this weekend.
“It is definitely different,” Truex said. “We are used to having the tires down there – which at some point during the race – the tires just kind of keep getting moved back a bit, and you can use more of that paint in turn 11, which really helps you get through there.
“It is going to be a little bit trickier. We have seen contact in that corner, many times before, so there is not really anywhere to escape when you have a guy kind of squeezing you going in there, so it could cause some problems, we will see.”
What he’s saying, is if a car gets spun in the hairpin, there’s going to be nowhere in the inside for drivers to go to avoid it. They’ll all have to go to the outside, which could create more crashes after the initial crash.
Bell agreed with that.
“I guess it is probably going to make it a little more congested if there is a crash and you aren’t going to have anywhere to go, but other than that, normal racing conditions, I didn’t notice a difference,” he said.
He also said it’s harder to see the racing line with the wall instead of the tires.
“It definitely makes it harder to see but running your normal line – you are just trying to keep it tight there,” Bell said. “It was a little bit harder to see, but other than that it wasn’t really any change.”
Hamlin says someone is going to get too close to the wall, force of habit, and they are going to get bit by it during the race.
“It’s a little bit blind but you’re kind of getting used to it and understanding the radius of how far I’ve got to turn the wheel to make the corner without hitting it,” Hamlin said. “I think there will definitely be a few that cut it too tight and risk knocking a toe link out but hopefully it’s not us.”
Last year, Tyler Reddick cut a tire out of Turn 11, and as opposed to driving all the way around the track shedding tire carcass, he just lopped around the island on both sides of the hairpin to get to pit road. NASCAR appreciated the effort to not litter debris around the track but they were forced to penalize him.
Now, that’s not even an option with the jersey barriers.
“It’s kind of hard to see too, but it’s kind of in the blind spot you have on the right side of the windshield,” Reddick said. “I know what they had in mind by doing it. Just to keep cars from crashing across turn 11. Guys like me with a flat come across it and back to pit road.”
Brad Keselowski was the most skeptical about it.
“It was definitely not what we expected,” Keselowski said. “We’ll see how it races. I don’t know if it will need to be changed before Sunday but it’s a pretty significant shift to the race track.”
What about the surface?
Remember the Twitter spat between Marcus Smith and Denny Hamlin over the Sonoma repave coming apart during a touring car racing event back in April? The new surface started to crumble and needed to be dug up and repaved before those sports car races could even be run that weekend.
Flash forward to this weekend, and it’s so far, so good after an hour of the much heavier NASCAR Cup Series cars turning laps and placing load on the pavement and patchwork.
“There’s a lot of patches on it but it’s definitely pretty smooth,” Hamlin said. “I haven’t noticed a difference in the surface where the patches are.”
Keselowski expressed optimism for the entire weekend.
“It seems like they fixed it preemptively with an epoxy patches and so forth,” said Keselowski. “It looks like we’re in a good place for the races this weekend.”
Reddick summed up how to feel about it in totality.
“You never know, but we’re good,” he said.
Does Hamlin expect it to hold through the weekend?
“I’m not sure about that,” Hamlin said. “I mean, I’m no expert in this by any means. These cars are going to test this surface more than any other cars would.”
Who else was fast?
Blaney was fastest in the one hour session ahead of Ty Gibbs and debuting Supercars points leader Will Brown, making a one-off appearance for Richard Childress Racing.
“I have to give credit to the GM simulator getting me up to speed here,” Brown told FOX Sports. “The guys back home at Australia race hard and these cars are very similar as well. I felt good entering the weekend. I’ve watched a lot of what SVG is doing every week and have worked with him a lot and he’s spotting for me.
“We have a long way to go still, a lot of learning to do and we’ll see how it goes tomorrow.”
Alex Bowman, Elliott, Michael McDowell, Noah Gragson, Zane Smith, Ross Chastain and Martin Truex Jr. completed the top-10.
There were several spins but nothing of consequence. Josh Berry spun early in Turn 2. Cam Waters, another Supercars contender making his debut for RFK Racing slid down the hill in Turn 1 and was ultimately 35th fastest.
RFK co-owner Keselowski was impressed and made light at the same time.
“He had a great excursion in front of me,” Keselowski said with a laugh. “We told him he gets a lot of points for the save because he didn’t hit anything. It’s always interesting to see guys with a different background come into our sport.
“It’s interesting to see them try to pick it up, the good and bad that comes with the challenge, and we haven’t as a team haven’t been as good on road courses as we want to be and maybe he can help get us there.”
Daniel Hemric jumped a curb in Turn 2 and spun. Erik Jones also spun in Turn 10. The speeds and edginess of the NextGen car is combing for a car that is right on the edge of going around at any time, at least based on the session.
“It is definitely easy to over drive the corner with the way the repave is,” Gibbs said. “I only ran twice here last year – in my whole career – I didn’t get used to it as much. This track is relatively new to me, and we go at it with a bang.”
Overall, Keselowski said the repave has given him ‘a lot to unlearn’ because of how it changes his approach.
“This track has so many nuances to it that were all related to it having no grip,” Keselowski said. “Now it’s 180 to that. Incredible grip. You have to rewire your brain and it’s going to be an interesting challenge.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.