NASCAR's Denny Hamlin Beefs Online With Sonoma Track Owner Over Major Pavement Issues

This past offseason, the Sonoma Raceway track surface was completely repaved. That is normally a relatively uneventful decision for a road course, but Wednesday's GT World Challenge Americas testing led to major break-ups of the track surface and necessitated immediate repairs. Somehow, the situation also led to some popcorn-worthy discourse on X between NASCAR Denny Hamlin and a track executive.

That led to the cancelation of on-track activity on Thursday and most activity on Friday. In a statement, representatives of the SRO organization that runs the series said that "it appears that some of the new pavement came apart in some areas around the track" after the test Repairs began immediately on Thursday. A representative for Sonoma Raceway also told Road & Track early Friday that "crews were working yesterday, and will continue today as scheduled to prepare the track for racing tomorrow and Sunday."

The track representative also provided more detail on the situation with the pavement.

"Pavement from isolated problem areas has been removed around Turns 11, 7, 9 and 4. Repair and repave is taking place in those areas today. Multiple track days, a vintage racing event and a NASCAR tire test took place on the circuit with no issues over the past six weeks since the repave was completed in late February, so samples of the damaged pavement are now being analyzed to determine the cause of the problems. Our focus now is to get it fixed so cars can get back on track for this weekend’s Fanatec GT World Challenge America event."

Until a report comes back from that analysis, the actual issue that caused the problem will remain unclear. What is known is that the problem did not occur during a test with heavier NASCAR stock cars at the track last week, or at any of the other on-track running since the track was re-paved. The region has seen unseasonably cold weather and heavy rains in the week since, a potential factor in damage that stretches across at least four corners of the hilly complex.

Photos from Toyota GR Cup driver Aidan Yoder appear to show major work happening at the entrance to the track's signature turn 11 hairpin, work that seems like a complete resurfacing. A photo of turn 7 also shared by Yoder shows extensive patches removed from the corner entry, covering the entire width of the track and following the racing line.

As Sonoma Raceway is a NASCAR track owned by NASCAR track-owning conglomerate Speedway Motorsports Inc., the issues drew the attention of Cup Series star Denny Hamlin late last night. Hamlin suggested that the issue was "paving one a budget [gone] wrong, then added that North Wilkesboro, an oval track owned by SMI that was re-paved this past offseason, could have similar problems. This led to a brief and heated exchange with SMI executive Marcus Smith, who repeatedly brought up Hamlin's lack of a NASCAR Cup Series championship in now-deleted tweets. Hamlin replied with a barb about Smith's track record as leader of SMI, comparing him to his father, company founder Bruton Smith.

SRO-sanctioned running at Sonoma is set to resume with a brief Toyota GR Cup practice session at 4 p.m. local time. If the repairs hold up, the race weekend will continue in full from Saturday morning. Neither Denny Hamlin nor Marcus Smith will be all that involved in either the repairs or the racing.

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