Sonoma Raceway adds permanent wall to reinforce track boundaries

NASCAR drivers will notice something different about Sonoma Raceway when they compete in the Toyota/Save Mart 350 on Sunday. According to TobyChristie.com, the track has replaced the tire barriers at the inside of Turn 11 with a permanent wall. The reason for the move is to help reinforce track boundaries.

This was a hot topic after NASCAR administered 40 penalties for short-cutting the course at the Circuit of Americas (COTA) back in March. NASCAR senior vice president of competition Elton Sawyer admitted that there’s “some work to be done” in officiating track limits moving forward.

A representative from @RaceSonoma tells me that the track has replaced the tire barriers at the inside of Turn 11 with a permanent wall, in an attempt to reinforce the track boundaries.#NASCAR | 📸: @BrianofCortland, @TobyChristieCom pic.twitter.com/x0SujIdzo1

— Joseph Srigley (@joe_srigley) June 6, 2024

“COTA is very challenging,” Sawyer said on Sirius XM Radio. “I would rather go to Daytona, Talladega, Atlanta every day of the week from an officiating standpoint. We’re calling balls and strikes on every lap and that’s not really where we wanna be. I commend our team in the tower. I thought they did a good job but it’s way too much about us and not enough about the athletes and our teams and our pit stops and strategy and things of that nature.

“So, [there’s] some work to be done. Not sure where the announcement is if we will or will not be going back to COTA in 2025. But we’re preparing today on what we can do going forward with the facility. And then how we would officiate it and what the deterrent looks like. Obviously, being out of bounds there and it being a drive-thru penalty, that’s significant. So, a lot of things for us to digest before we get back to COTA.”

Will Joey Logano like the permanent wall at Sonoma Raceway?

Two-time Cup Series Champion Joey Logano also shared his thoughts on the track limits at COTA. “To me, add some curbs, add some curbs that are on the outside that are big enough that we will not go to the outside of it,” Logano said on his weekly SiriusXM appearance. “We kind of lived part of that story a little bit from 3, 4, 5, 6 those areas where they were calling the penalties. And then we have to add some kind of bigger curb through 8 and 9 there where we go through the dirt. We got to add something that really keeps us from going over there.

“It’s easy to say, ‘Well F1 doesn’t need it and F1 doesn’t do it.’ Well, they can’t even touch the curbs. Their cars are so different than ours, our cars are trucks. We have monster trucks compared to an F1 car, we can ramp these things.”

On3’s Nick Geddes and Jonathan Howard contributed to this story.