NASCAR went road racing this weekend for the first time in 2018. Amid the left turns, right turns, inclines and drops, we saw the same drivers who have been battling at the front all season again get to the front.
This time, it was defending champion Martin Truex Jr. picking up his third win of the season and third career road course win, out-strategizing Kevin Harvick, Clint Bowyer and Kyle Busch with his stops on pit road.
It wasn't just that he won -- it was the amount he won by that's worth focusing on this week.
You can't handle the Truex
After leading late by more than 20 seconds, Truex coasted home by a victory margin of 10.5 seconds thanks to his pit strategy, which put him considerably ahead of the other contenders. That seems like a lot, but consider that Truex won earlier this season at Fontana, California, by 11.7 seconds, and it doesn't seem like quite as much.
But your initial instinct was correct. That is a lot.
Truex has multiple wins this season of more than 10 seconds. Prior to this season, nobody had won by a margin that large since Kurt Busch at Texas in 2009. In another pit-strategy-aided victory, Busch won by more than 25 seconds.
How rare is it to have two such victories? Well, since 1990, the only other drive with multiple victories of 10 or more seconds (or having lapped the field), was Dale Jarrett, who had one in 1996 and another in 1998.
The last to have multiple such wins in a single season was Darrell Waltrip in 1982, when he won races at Martinsville and at Nashville by a lap.
Harvick happy with a second?
Harvick didn't pick up another victory this season but did finish second, his eighth top-2 finish in 16 races this season -- one more than Busch.
That also puts him on pace for 18 this season, which would top his career high of 16 in 2015. It also would put him in select company.
Harvick had 10 top-2 finishes at this point in 2015, but before that, no driver has had eight top-two finishes this early in the season since Jeff Gordon had eight in both 1995 and 1997.
If Harvick maintains this pace and gets to 16 this year, he'd be the first driver to do that in a season since another Gordon year, 1998, when he had 19. It's happened only one other time since 1980, when Waltrip had 18 in 1981.
Let's linger on the Dinger
Not to be lost among Truex's and Harvick's performances was the fact that it looked like AJ Allmendinger would be able to hang with them until he lost an engine during the second stage. It was unfortunate, since Allmendinger needed a win to get into playoff contention, and this was one of two realistic shots for him.
But winning a stage is a pretty good deal, considering that only 16 drivers have won a stage (which doesn't include the final stage of the race -- that's just registered as a race win), since that format came into being before last season.
And with a single stage win, he has as many as Bowyer -- a 2018 championship contender -- and seven-time series champion Jimmie Johnson.
Allmendinger also can fall back on the fact that he's been better at Watkins Glen than at Sonoma. Over the past five seasons, he has a 32nd-place average finish at Sonoma and a 9.5 average at Watkins Glen.