Given that 2013 was the first season I watched NASCAR, the first memory I have of Sonoma Raceway was watching Martin Truex Jr. snap a 218-race winless streak in the NASCAR Cup Series.
Two years later, Sonoma was the site of the start of Kyle Busch‘s incredible 2015 comeback that eventually culminated in a championship. In 2016, Sonoma was home to Tony Stewart‘s final Cup win after he performed a Ricky Rudd-esque bump-and-run on Denny Hamlin in turn 11.
In the nine years that have passed since Stewart won that race, I’m hard-pressed to recall a Sonoma moment that stands out.
Sonoma has been a fixture of the NASCAR calendar since 1989, and until 2018, was one of only two road courses on the Cup schedule, alongside Watkins Glen International.
The track has had its fair share of memorable moments — Stewart’s last win, Rudd getting black-flagged for dumping Davey Allison in 1991, the first race with electronic timing and scoring in 1993.
During a nearly three-decade stint as one of two road courses on the schedule, Sonoma was invaluable. Today, it seems like a facility that could become expendable to NASCAR in the near future.
In stark contrast to 2017, today’s Cup schedule consists of six road course events. Circuit of the Americas, the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, Autodromos Hermanos Rodriguez and the Chicago street course have joined Watkins Glen and Sonoma as the road courses on the calendar.
Mexico City and Chicago — or a street race in general — are both flashy events with a solid on-track product. COTA put on a fantastic race in March, Watkins Glen has been perhaps NASCAR’s most consistent road course in regard to a good racing product and the ROVAL still has its moments.
And then there’s Sonoma, sitting way out west in California with a much less impressive resume in recent years.
I’ll preface my forthcoming comments with this: Like every racetrack in the country, Sonoma has endearing qualities, and assuredly, a faction of diehard enthusiasts. It’s a challenging, technical road course with over three-and-a-half decades worth of Cup aces to boast.
Bu today, that’s not enough. Not only is Sonoma old hat as far as road races go, it’s also not a race that is particularly exciting to watch.
Only once since Stewart’s thrilling win in 2016 has the margin of victory at Sonoma been less than a second. That happened in 2021, when Chase Elliott was only 0.614 seconds behind Kyle Larson at the checkered flag.
Even more so than other road courses, Sonoma tends to be a race full of long green-flag runs that allow the field to be stretched out. The track does feature several heavy braking zones that offer good passing opportunities, but seldom do those inside the top five near the end of the race have an opportunity to get close to the leader.
In fact, in the three Next Gen races at Sonoma, the closest margin of victory was 2.979 seconds in 2023, when Truex beat Kyle Busch.
Margin of victory is far from the be all, end all of determining a good race, but the race for the win at Sonoma hasn’t been a particularly close one in almost a decade. Contrast that to races at COTA, Watkins Glen, Chicago and the ROVAL over that same timeframe and you’ll find much different results.
Let’s not mince words: I’m not calling for Sonoma to be axed from the schedule. But if any road course is on the proverbial chopping block in the near future, it makes sense that it would be Sonoma, which is owned by SMI and can’t boast being either a big, move-the-needle event or a race that will produce a very long highlight reel.
Sonoma might not be the worst race on the schedule every year, but it’s fallen into a fate that’s comparable, if not worse: being perhaps the most forgettable race on the schedule, and one that pales in comparison to its road course peers.
There might be a little dust on this bottle, but it is not, in fact, getting sweeter with time.
A member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Samuel also covers NASCAR for Yardbarker, Field Level Media, and Heavy Sports. He will attend the University of Arkansas in the fall of 2025.