MOORESVILLE, N.C. (June 23, 2026) – It was a street fight last Sunday. Despite being on an active United States military base with a significant law enforcement presence, the NASCAR Cup Series race at Qualcomm Circuit on Naval Base Coronado featured rooting, gouging and departures from the standards of polite society.
There were mangled fenders, bent walls and bruised feelings after the 75-lap race around the 3.4-mile, 16-turn temporary street circuit in San Diego. Spinning cars and seven caution periods consuming 11 laps in the 3-hour and 37-minute affair were the result of conduct more suited to the stables than the drawing room.
Certainly when the Cup Series heads a little more than 530 miles north to Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway for this Sunday’s Toyota/Save Mart 350k, decorum and civility will return. After all, it’s Wine Country, where table settings come with fine linens, refined soil grows the finest grapes, sophistication fills wine glasses, and good taste is an HOA requirement. Cup Series drivers will surely read the room, right?
If history is any indication, no. Fendered fisticuffs will continue unabated, as volume again supersedes persuasion. They are the bull in the proverbial china shop.
“NASCAR is a contact sport on road courses,” said Cody Ware, driver of the No. 51 Super.com Chevrolet for Rick Ware Racing. “We go into it with a have-at-it mentality, to where if there’s a racing surface that you can plant four tires on, you do it. Beating and banging is expected.”
Since the debut of the NextGen car in 2022, there have been an average of 6.5 cautions per race at Sonoma. Most stemmed from spins, stalled cars and drivers getting knocked into barriers. The “Big One” of superspeedway-style crashes doesn’t typically happen. A driver’s own mistake, and other drivers’ lack of patience with their counterparts, are the typical contributing factors.
“Every touch of the gas pedal has consequences that unfold as the race goes on,” Ware said. “You’re managing every decision.”
Ware and his Cup Series brethren are at least in road-course mode after racing at San Diego. Sonoma marks the fourth and final road-course race on the 2026 schedule. The other 32 races on the Cup Series calendar are all on ovals.
“Road racing is where I did a lot of my growing up and learning how to race,” Ware said. “There was a lot of back and forth between stock cars and GT cars and sports cars over the years as I found my place in NASCAR. So I’m always, ‘The more the merrier,’ when it comes to road racing.”
Ware won the 2019-2020 LMP2 championship in the Asian Le Mans Series with co-driver Gustas Grinbergas, and in a prelude to that title, Ware was the 2014 Lamborghini Super Trofeo North America Rookie of the Year. In January 2024 at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway, Ware piloted a Ligier JS P320 to a podium finish in the IMSA VP Racing SportsCar Challenge LMP3 class. He has also competed in Whelen Mazda MX-5 Cup and the NTT IndyCar Series.
Even with a wealth of road-racing experience, Ware’s time on Sonoma’s 1.99-mile, 10-turn layout is limited. He has just five starts at the track, and his drive in last year’s Toyota/Save Mart 350k was his first since 2022.
“Sonoma has a lot of elevation changes and it presents some pretty good passing opportunities,” Ware said. “The layout makes for some really aggressive, tight racing. Anytime you put a stock car on a road course with that kind of elevation, it creates some really good racing. It’s one of the coolest road courses we go to, for sure.”
That Ware was turning left and right a few days prior in San Diego will help his cause in Sonoma.
“Having back-to-back road-course weekends – the steering feel, the braking feel, the power input – it’s all still relevant,” Ware said. “Track conditions between San Diego and Sonoma will obviously be very different, but when you only have a handful of road-course races a year, it’s hard to get into a rhythm. But at least with San Diego, we’re in a bit of a flow. It was a good refresher before tackling Sonoma.”
Ware starts tackling Sonoma at 11 a.m. PDT/2 p.m. EDT on Saturday during practice before qualifying at 12:10 p.m. PDT/3:10 p.m. EDT. TruTV and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide live coverage of both. The Toyota/Save Mart 350k goes live at 12:30 p.m. PDT/3:30 p.m. EDT with flag-to-flag coverage delivered by TNT and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.
About Rick Ware Racing:
Rick Ware has been a motorsports mainstay for more than 40 years. It began at age 6 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’s seat and into full-time team ownership. In 1995, Rick Ware Racing was formed, and with his wife Lisa by his side, Ware has since built his eponymous organization into an entity that competes full-time in the elite 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, FIM World Supercross Championship (WSX) and zMAX CARS Tour.
