LEGACY MOTOR CLUB: SONOMA RACEWAY PRE-RACE ADVANCE
EVENT: Toyota / Save Mart 350
DATE: July 13, 2025
RACE: NASCAR Cup Series 20 of 36
TRACK: Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway | 1.99-mile, 10-turn street course
CLUB MINUTES:
TNT IN SEASON BRACKET: With two rounds complete in TNT’s In Season Tournament, both LEGACY MOTOR CLUB drivers have advanced to the third round to face each other in an elimination battle. Last weekend, Erik Jones bested his opponent Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. despite a broken toe link after the second stage. Meanwhile, John Hunter Nemechek beat his match-up Chase Elliott in the final laps of the race by finished one spot better than the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series Champion. Now the LEGACY MC teammates will go head-to-head in this Sunday’s Toyota / Save Mart 350 to the final four next weekend at Dover (Del.) Motor Speedway.
PLAYOFF PICTURE WITH SEVEN TO GO: The NASCAR Playoffs kick off on Aug. 31 at Darlington (S.C.) Raceway. Only seven races remain until they begin, and both LEGACY MC drivers are in the hunt to point their way in. Erik Jones has been one of the biggest points movers over the past two months, catapulting himself from 29th in points at Texas Motor Speedway to 17th. He’s currently 50 points below the top-16 cutline. Nemechek is currently 20th in points after a strong couple of races. He’s currently 68 points before the cutline.
DOLLAR TREE VENDOR SPOTLIGHT: Dollar Tree will serve as the primary partner on the No. 43 Toyota Camry XSE, driven by Erik Jones, at Sonoma Raceway. The bold green and white Dollar Tree scheme will hit the track alongside support from vendor partner Mt. Dew, showcasing a strong collaboration for the race weekend across LEGACY MC’s social platforms.
LEGACY LANE: LEGACY MC co-owner Jimmie Johnson has one win, four top five, and seven top 10 finishes in 12 starts at Sonoma Raceway. He has led 85 laps at the 1.99-mile road course. His average finish at Sonoma is 12.4 in 17 starts and won at Sonoma in 2010.
KENSETH AT SONOMA: LEGACY MC competition advisor Matt Kenseth owns 19 NASCAR Cup Series starts at Sonoma. In total, he owns one top-10 with his best finish of eighth in June 2008 at the road course.
NEVER SETTLE: Join ESPN’s Marty Smith and LEGACY MOTOR CLUB’s co-owner Johnson for their weekly podcast, “Never Settle”. The podcast airs live on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio Ch. 90 at 2 p.m. ET every Wednesday and can be downloaded wherever fans source their podcasts. This week’s guest is six-time IndyCar Champion Scott Dixon.
JOHN HUNTER NEMECHEK
NO. 42 MOBIL1 TOYOTA CAMRY XSE
JHN AT SONOMA: John Hunter Nemechek has four starts at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway across all three NASCAR national series – one in the Cup Series, two in the Xfinity Series, and one in the Truck Series. He finished 8th in the Truck Series race in 2022, followed by a 16th-place result in the 2023 Xfinity race. In 2024, he ran both the Xfinity and Cup races, finishing eighth and 29th, respectively.
ROAD COURSES THIS YEAR: Nemechek’s first road course race of the 2025 season produced a 22nd-place result at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas. The team learned and grew from that race to deliver a career-best Cup Series road course finish of sixth at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City. Last Sunday’s Grant Park 165 on the Chicago Street Course tested him once again. After qualifying 25th, he battled through multiple challenges and damage to climb to 15th by the checkered flag.
T-MACK SONOMA STATS: Sunday’s Toyota / Save Mart 350 will be crew chief Travis Mack’s fifth race at Sonoma Raceway. His first outing came in June 2021 with Daniel Suárez, who earned a 12th-place finish. The duo returned in June 2022 to capture the long-awaited victory for the No. 99 team. In June 2023, Mack and Suárez finished 22nd. Then in his last race there in June 2024, Mack scored a sixth-place result with A.J. Allmendinger.
NEMECHEK’S UPWARD TRAJECTORY: Following the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway, Nemechek sat 26th in the NASCAR Cup Series point standings. A strong and steady performance throughout the month of June marked a turning point for him and the No. 42 team though. Building momentum with each race, they climbed six positions in the standings and now sit 20th as they head into the Sonoma race weekend with renewed confidence and a clear upward trajectory.
JOHN HUNTER NEMECHEK QUOTE:
“I don’t have a lot of experience at Sonoma under my belt with only one Cup start. I wrecked around Lap 3 last year from some oil on track getting into Turn 1. Not really a lot to take away but looking forward to going back out there. I’ve been able to run a lot of laps on sim, iRacing, and video games growing up, so hopefully all that prep is good for us this weekend. Our road course program continues to get better each time we’ve run road course this year. Hopefully we have positive momentum coming off Chicago and have a really good No. 42 Mobil 1 Toyota Camry XSE.”
TRAVIS MACK QUOTE:
“Sonoma is where I got my first win in the Cup series in 2004 with Jeff Gordon and my first win as crew chief in the Cup Series, so I plan to make it our first win with John Hunter. I’m confident in our road course cars. We were sixth in Mexico, we had a top ten or a top five day going at Chicago with potential, and it just didn’t work out due to some damage, but we’re really looking forward to Sonoma.”
ERIK JONES
NO. 43 DOLLAR TREE TOYOTA CAMRY XSE
JONES SONOMA STATS: Sunday’s Toyota / Save Mart 350 will mark Jones’ eighth NASCAR Cup Series start at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway. In his prior seven starts, Jones earned two top-10s and four top-20s with a best finish of seventh earned in his June 2018 start at the road course. He followed that up in June 2019 with an eighth-place finish and an 11th-place result in June 2021. Jones has one additional start outside of the Cup Series in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West in June 2018 where he started 13th and finished sixth.
BESHORE AT SONOMA: Crew chief Ben Beshore has been on top of the pit box for four races in the Cup Series at Sonoma. His first two in June 2017 and June 2021 resulted in fifth-place results in both events from Kyle Busch. He went on to finish 30th with Busch in June 2022 and 29th last June with John Hunter Nemechek. He has one race under his belt in the NASCAR Xfinity Series as well with Nemechek, where the team started ninth and finished 16th.
SWAPPING ROLES: Sonoma race weekend will also mark Jones’ debut in the NASCAR Xfinity Series as a spotter. He’s switching roles with his full-time spotter Will Rodgers while the latter gets behind the wheel of the No. 70 car in Saturday’s 79-lap Xfinity Series race. Jones has limited experience as a spotter in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, but this will be his first in the series where he owns nine victories. Rodgers started spotting for Jones at the beginning of the 2025 season. Saturday’s race will mark Rodger’s ninth Xfinity Series career start.
RODGERS AND JONES SONOMA BATTLE: Jones and his spotter Rodgers only raced against each other twice in their careers on the track. The first was the June 2018 NASCAR K&N Pro Series West race at Sonoma. It was just the second time Jones tackled the track after making his debut in his 2017 rookie season, and he was joined by fellow Cup Series drivers Aric Almirola, Daniel Suarez, and William Byron in the 64-lap race. Rodgers was running a part-time schedule in 2018 but started from the pole for the race while Jones started 13th. By the checkered flag, Rodgers protected his pole position to win the race while Jones rallied for a sixth-place finish.
RUN WITH ME: Jones will join the latest installment of NASCAR’s “Run with Me” social media series this weekend at Sonoma alongside the two people who got him into running – Trevor Bayne and Matt Kenseth. “Run with Me” started at the beginning of the 2025 season with the premise of an interview with drivers while having them run a lap around the track. In the latest installment, the LEGACY MC trio will do a relay-style interview with Bayne starting the interview through the first few turns before handing it off to Kenseth who will then hand it off to Jones to cross the start-finish line. The video will live on NASCAR’s social platforms after filming.
ZIGAZOO CONTEST: As part of his partnership with Zigazoo, Jones launched a competition last weekend for a contest to invite one Zigazoo user and his family to come out to a race this season. In a social post released last Saturday, he challenged young fans to post their own victory celebration on the Zigazoo app for a chance to win a trip to a race and meet Jones. All fans have to do is post their video on the app with the hashtag #ErikJonesVictoryChallenge.
ERIK JONES QUOTE:
“Sonoma is always fun. It’s been a place that I’ve been to for a long time now. With that, it’s one of the places that I feel comfortable at when making laps. I feel like the tracks lends itself to some good racing – some hard racing – but you’re able to pass and move around to do what you need to do. I always look forward to get out there. It’s a beautiful part of the country and a great time of year to race there. Hopefully we can get ourselves back on track after Chicago.”
BEN BESHORE QUOTE:
“The unique part about Sonoma is that it has a lot of elevation changes with the up-and-down. It’s got more “s” type corners than Chicago instead of the hard-breaking corners. Sonoma is more of a flowy-rhythm track. It’s got more finesse-type sections. After the repave, the track has a lot more grip than it had a few years ago. It used to be really biased toward forward drive and getting the throttle down off the corners, but now it’s gripped up and you can make a lot of grip through the tires. It’s going to be a lot like Chicago from a strategy standpoint to keep your guy out front and keep him out of trouble.”
CLUB APPEARANCES:
Jones will stop by the Toyota merchandise hauler on Sunday, July 13 at 10:25 a.m. local time to sign autographs for fans in the Sonoma Raceway Fan Zone.
Nemechek will visit the NASCAR Classics trackside merchandise rig to sign for fans at 10:15 a.m. local time on Sunday, July 13.
TUNE IN:
Fans can tune in to watch the Toyota / Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway on Sunday, July 13 at 3:30 p.m. ET on TNT, MAX, MRN, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio (Channel 90).
ABOUT LEGACY MOTOR CLUB: (LEGACY MC) is a premier auto racing organization co-owned by seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and 2024 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee, Jimmie Johnson and Knighthead Capital Management, LLC. Drawing from a rich tradition of success, LEGACY MC is dedicated to pushing the boundaries of motorsport and setting new standards of excellence. The CLUB competes under the Toyota Gazoo Racing banner in the NASCAR Cup Series with the No. 43 Toyota Camry XSE piloted by Erik Jones and the No. 42 Toyota Camry XSE driven by John Hunter Nemechek. Johnson also races on a limited basis in the No. 84 Toyota Camry XSE. With NASCAR legend and Hall of Famer Richard Petty, “The King”, serving as CLUB Ambassador, LEGACY MC blends timeless racing traditions with a new forward-thinking vision. As an inclusive community for motorsport enthusiasts, LEGACY MC honors both its storied past and the promising future of its members, always striving for victory and championship glory at the pinnacle of NASCAR competition.
