SONOMA, Calif. — While Daniel Suarez celebrated his first career Cup win last year at Sonoma Raceway, Toyota left this road course with its worst Cup performance in more than a decade.
The road courses proved difficult for Toyota teams last year, but Sonoma was especially painful. No Toyota cars finished in the top 15. That hadn’t happened since the manufacturer’s inaugural Cup season in 2007.
MORE: Sonoma Cup race details
An improved road course program, helped by Tyler Reddick’s move from Richard Childress Racing to 23XI Racing, sees five Toyotas starting in the top 10 for today’s race at Sonoma. Denny Hamlin will lead the field to green. Reddick, who drives for the team Hamlin co-owns with Michael Jordan, starts second.
While Saturday’s qualifying doesn’t guarantee success in today’s race, it’s a step forward for Toyota.
“I think that Tyler is an element of it, but certainly, I think our cars are better,” Hamlin said of the Toyota teams.
“Last year, we were at a pretty big disadvantage at tracks like this, which gave us an advantage at other tracks. When the cars are so close, when one has an aerodynamic advantage at one spot over another, it is going to be great for one track and bad for another.
“The way we developed our car was really made to have a big spoiler on it, and when NASCAR and the drivers wanted to reduce the downforce, it made it to where our cars weren’t that good. We got to revamp that this year, and certainly, the whole package it put together more for the Toyotas and that is what you are seeing.”
That was a key factor for the turnaround for Toyotas. A nice bonus was getting Reddick, who won twice on road courses last year at Richard Childress Racing.
23XI Racing signed Reddick last summer for the start of the 2024 season. Reddick became available when RCR signed Kyle Busch for this season.
Reddick got an early start to this year. He was the Toyota driver for the Goodyear tire test in January at Circuit of the Americas. When the series raced there in March, Reddick was the lone Toyota driver to qualify in the top 10 and went on to win that race.
Fellow Toyota driver Martin Truex Jr. says that Reddick has been a valuable addition.
“Everybody was looking at his data at COTA,” Truex said. “I guess the benefit for us is that we get to ask him questions and hear about it. ‘Why did you do this? Why did you do that?’
“I think there is a lot of benefit to that these days. Definitely, the simulator time as well. We’ve only raced the one road course this year, so we still have a lot to go and a lot to do here, but, for sure, it was crazy impressive what he did at COTA.”
While it is a collective effort between Toyota and its teams to improve on road courses, Reddick can make an impact, much like AJ Allmendinger has helped the road course program at Kaulig Racing and Michael McDowell has helped Front Row Motorsports’ road course efforts. McDowell starts third today. Allmendinger is fifth.
“Everybody is so good at the top level, you just give a direction to an organization or manufacturer and you show that this is fast,” Allmendinger said of how a driver can help improve performance. “Other drivers adapt to that and then find speed as well.”
