Need For Speed Race Preview: Sonoma

Change of scenery this weekend as the Cup drivers have already set up shop in the Sonoma wine country for the first of 2 road course races on the current schedule. Are you a fan of road course racin'? Some are; some aren't; and there's those that would rather a road course be featured in the Chase.

Infineon Raceway will celebrate 21 years of cup racin' this Sunday.
Breaking down the stats:

In 20 years, there's only been 5 repeat winners: Jeff Gordon (5), Ernie Irvan (2), Ricky Rudd (2), Tony Stewart (2) and Rusty Wallace (2).

Gordon & Stewart are the only active repeat winners in the race on Sunday. As a matter of fact, those are the 2 names that we can mention the most @ Infineon. Stewart and Gordon are 1-2 on top of the point standings.

Jeff Gordon has the most wins there with 5. In the past 5 races, he has been the only repeat winner (2004, 2006). 5 races have been won from the pole. Gordon was the last to do so on June 27, 2004. Gordon leads all active drivers with the most laps led @ Infineon with 437 combined in the 9 races he has led there. He's also the all-time leader in the series with 9 road course wins between Infineon and Watkins Glen with 5 @ Infineon and 4 @ Watkins Glen.

Current points leader Tony Stewart has 6 combined road course wins - 2 @ Infineon and 4 @ Watkins Glen. Stewart's 47 points ahead of Gordon in the standings heading into Sunday's race.

Kyle Busch is the defending race winner.

Road course "ringers" will be much in the vocabulary over the weekend. Boris Said, Ron Fellows, Brian Simo, Tom Hubert, Max Papis and Patrick Carpentier are on the entry list. The last time a "road course ace" won a cup event dates back to 1973. Mark Donohue won that year @ Riverside Raceway.

Some drivers run great on the road courses and there are some that hope they can just last through it. There very well could be a shake up in the points. One thing is for certain, our race weekend is about to begin.

Qualifying gets underway at 6:30 our time on Friday. TV coverage for the 112 lap race on the 12-turn 1.99 mile circuit starts at 4:30 this Sunday.

There's night racin' on the schedule for both the Camping World Truck & Nationwide Series @ Milwaukee.

NCWTS - Friday at 8:30 SPEED
NNS - Saturday at 8 ESPN2