JUSTIN HALEY | KAZ GRALA
Sonoma Advance
Event Overview
● Event: Save Mart 350k (Round 16 of 36)
● Time/Date: 3:30 p.m. EDT on Sunday, June 9
● Location: Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway
● Layout: 1.99-mile, 10-turn road course
● Laps/Miles: 110 laps/218.9 miles (352.3 kilometers)
● Stage Lengths: Stage 1: 25 laps / Stage 2: 30 laps / Final Stage: 55 laps
● TV/Radio: FOX / PRN / SiriusXM NASCAR Radio
Justin Haley, Driver of the No. 51 Jacob Construction Ford Mustang Dark Horse
● As the NASCAR Cup Series treks to Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway, Rick Ware Racing (RWR) driver Justin Haley hopes to keep the ball rolling for the No. 51 Jacob Construction team after scoring its second top-10 of the season. Haley’s ninth-place finish at World Wide Technology Raceway (WWTR) in Madison, Illinois, was his best at the 1.25-mile track and matched his best finish this season for RWR.
● The newly repaved, 1.99-mile, 10-turn road course in Sonoma, where Haley owns three starts with a best finish of 12th, earned in 2022, is the perfect opportunity for the 25-year-old to better his top finish of the season. He’s already shown the No. 51 team is capable of carrying speed through left- and right-hand turns after a standout performance in the first road-course event of the year March 24 at Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas. Haley crossed the finish line fourth but the result was later nullified with a disqualification following post-race technical inspection.
● The showing at COTA wasn’t a surprise coming from Haley, who has two top-five finishes and three top-10s among 19 Cup Series road-course starts, and has led 23 laps en route to a runner-up finish at last year’s inaugural Chicago Street Race. In the NASCAR Xfinity Series, he owns four top-fives and 10 top-10s in 16 road-course starts, including two runner-up finishes – 2020 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and 2021 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington.
● Following Sunday’s race at WWTR, Haley stands sixth among drivers in laps completed (4,328) and miles completed (5,407.04), and first among the Ford drivers in the same categories. His eight lead-lap finishes through the first 15 races surpasses a season total for any RWR driver to date. In addition, Haley’s ninth-place finishes, earned in two of the last three races, mark the first time an RWR driver has earned top-10 finishes in the same timeframe.
Kaz Grala, Driver of the No. 15 N29 Capital Partners Ford Mustang Dark Horse
● Grala returns to the No. 15 N29 Capital Partners Ford Mustang Dark Horse for RWR for his first Sonoma start in the Cup Series. Grala does own one Xfinity Series start at at the track, which resulted in an 20th-place finish in 2023. The 25-year-old driver has four top-fives and eight top-10s in 19 Xfinity Series starts on road courses with a best finish of fourth earned in 2020 at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.
● Grala finished 14th in his lone NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series start at Sonoma in 2022 and also competed in the ARCA Menards Series West event at the track in 2015, finishing 17th.
● Grala’s first career Cup Series start came in 2020 on the Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway road course. He started 10th in the field of 39 cars piloting the No. 3 Richard Childress Racing entry and led three laps en route to a seventh-place finish. It’s his best finish in three Cup Series starts on road courses.
● The Boston native is no stranger to making left and right turns. In 2014, at the age of 15, Grala became the youngest driver ever to compete in an IMSA event when he drove in the Michelin Pilot Challenge. Two years later, he made his debut in the Rolex 24 At Daytona, where he was the youngest driver in the field, co-piloting a GT3-class car for RWR president Robby Benton.
Rick Ware Racing Notes
● Mission Foods NHRA Drag Racing Series Top Fuel driver Clay Millican heads to Bristol, Tennesse for this weekend’s Thunder Valley Nationals. The RWR driver advanced to semifinals last weekend at the New England Nationals in Epping, New Hampshire, where he was bested by Tony Schumacher. Millican moved up to sixth in the driver standings with his semifinal result.
● Rick Ware has been a motorsports mainstay for more than 40 years. It began at age six when the third-generation racer began his driving career and has since spanned four wheels and two wheels on both asphalt and dirt. Competing in the SCCA Trans Am Series and other road-racing divisions led Ware to NASCAR in the early 1980s, where he finished third in his NASCAR debut – the 1983 Warner W. Hodgdon 300 NASCAR Grand American race at Riverside (Calif.) International Raceway. More than a decade later, injuries would force Ware out of the driver seat and into fulltime team ownership. In 1995, Rick Ware Racing was formed, and with wife Lisa by his side, Ware has since built his eponymous organization into an entity that fields two fulltime entries in the NASCAR Cup Series while simultaneously campaigning successful teams in the Top Fuel class of the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series, Progressive American Flat Track and FIM World Supercross Championship (WSX), where RWR won the 2022 SX2 championship with rider Shane McElrath.
Justin Haley, Driver Q&A
When you start to knock down consistent top-10 finishes, there’s a lot of talk about momentum. Do you feel like momentum is real, or is it just the result of hard work?
“A little bit. The better you run, it just kind of snowballs and this sport has always been like that. People have always said once you get your first one, the rest are easier, and not that we’ve won but it’s kind of the same theory. But it is the work that’s put in. You try so hard to have those good runs and, once you get it, you know what led to it and it’s going to keep producing those good runs. You have that setup, you have your notes, and then you just go from there. So yeah, we’ve got a lot of momentum right now and have had it over the past few weeks. We’ve been really good. I feel like even our Charlotte race could have been a lot better if we would have been able to finish the whole distance. The cars are driving really well right now. They’re super fast and competitive.”
What will be the biggest challenge at Sonoma this weekend?
“Going into Sonoma this year, the repave is the talk of the town. I know there’s been some tire testing out there and stuff like that. I’ve heard the cars that tested were around three seconds faster than they we’ve been in the past, so that will make it interesting – the tire fall-off and the tire wear and the tire heat and things like that. You really had to manage your stuff for a run in the past. I’m curious to go out and see if the same old bumps around the track are still there or if repave has taken those out. I feel like I’ve always been decent at Sonoma. We were really quick at COTA and qualified in the top-15, so if we have anything similar to the package we had a COTA, I feel like we will be quite competitive.”
Kaz Grala, Driver Q&A
This Sunday will mark your first Cup Series start at Sonoma, but it’s not your first time competing on the track. How comfortable do you feel about this weekend’s race?
“Sonoma is a track I’ve really enjoyed racing at in the past. I think the repave is a bit of an unknown for everyone, but it seems like we’ll be seeing a bit more speed than what the track has allowed in the past. The RWR cars have been really competitive over the last few weeks and I think we learned a lot at the first road course of the year, so we should be able to keep things moving in the right direction.”
What makes a road course enjoyable for a driver?
“I think it depends on your background and the type of driver you are. Success always helps, and I’ve done really well on the more technical road courses, and I’ve had the benefit of running road courses all throughout my career. I think that helps a lot in certain situations. If you get behind, you know what you need to do to get back to the front and that you’re capable. I don’t need to overthink or stress about where we qualify or if we have a bad pit stop because I know I have the tools to get that position back and give the No. 15 team a good finish.”
