William Sawalich followed his Friday ARCA West victory with a career-best third-place finish in the NASCAR Xfinity Series race from Sonoma Raceway on Saturday afternoon. Sawalich ran in the top-five for the majority of the race and led a strong effort from the Team Toyota contingent.<\/p>\n
His teammates, Riley Herbst (fifth) and Taylor Gray (seventh), also scored top-10 finishes, while Brandon Jones led all drivers with 19 stage points. Jones also earned a stage win to add to his Playoff total.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Toyota GAZOO Racing Post-Race Recap<\/strong> NASCAR Xfinity Series (NXS)<\/strong> Sonoma Raceway<\/strong> Race 19 of 33 \u2013 156.95 miles, 79 laps <\/strong> TOYOTA FINISHING POSITIONS <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n 1st, Connor Zilisch*<\/p>\n 2nd, Shane Van Gisbergen*<\/p>\n 3rd, WILLIAM SAWALICH <\/strong> 4th, Nick Sanchez*<\/p>\n 5th, RILEY HERBST<\/strong><\/p>\n 7th, TAYLOR GRAY<\/strong><\/p>\n 13th, BRANDON JONES<\/strong><\/p>\n 18th, DEAN THOMPSON<\/strong><\/p>\n 36th, SAGE KARAM<\/strong><\/p>\n *non-Toyota driver\u00a0 TOYOTA QUOTES<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n WILLIAM SAWALICH, <\/strong>No. 18 Soundgear Toyota GR Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing<\/p>\n Finishing Position: <\/strong>3rd<\/p>\n How rewarding is this after the challenge of the season so far? <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt was a great weekend for us. Everybody at Joe Gibbs Racing \u2013 I can\u2019t thank the ARCA guys enough for yesterday, and the Xfinity guys today. They put together a good Soundgear GR Supra that was as fast as Xfinity Mobile. Just a great, great day to be honest. Our early run speed at times was comparable to them, but our long run, we couldn\u2019t keep up with them. They were pretty dang good.\u201d<\/p>\n What did you learn today, and what can you take forward? <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt definitely feels good to be able to do this and put a full race together and have everything go right \u2013 pit stops, everything was good on pit road, no penalties, very minimal mistakes. Just something to build on for the future.\u201d<\/p>\n RILEY HERBST, <\/strong>No. 19 Monster Energy Toyota GR Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing<\/p>\n Finishing Position: <\/strong>5th<\/p>\n What else did you need out of your race car today?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cYesterday \u2013 just my really poor qualifying effort, I felt like, I don\u2019t think we could have ran with the 88 (Connor Zilisch) and the 9 (Shane Van Gisbergen), but I think we could have been a third-place car. Just thanks to everybody at Toyota, Joe Gibbs Racing, Monster Energy. It was fun to come back to the Xfinity Series. This series is fun, and it was good practice for tomorrow. We are going to need the practice for tomorrow. Hopefully, we will have good run tomorrow too, and we will have a solid weekend here on the West Coast.\u201d<\/p>\n TAYLOR GRAY, <\/strong>No. 54 Operation 300 Toyota GR Supra, Joe Gibbs Racing<\/p>\n Finishing Position: <\/strong>7th<\/p>\n After starting in the back, are you happy with a top-10 finish?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cYeah, definitely happy. More so proud of all of my guys at Joe Gibbs Racing, Jason (Ratcliff, crew chief) for bringing a really fast Operation 300 Toyota GR Supra. I feel like we were definitely as fast as Xfinity Mobile \u2013 just sucks starting in the back like that. You can\u2019t do that. It kills your day points wise, stage points wise. Track position at the end of the race is so important. I feel like we were definitely a top-three car; just had to start so far back and build our track position back up.\u201d<\/p>\n Toyota Racing PR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"William Sawalich followed his Friday ARCA West victory with a career-best third-place finish in the NASCAR Xfinity Series…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":60974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[26244,16412,44040,1406,44041,6180,6166,9651,62,1103,67,132,68,11932],"class_list":{"0":"post-60973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-arca","9":"tag-joe-gibbs-racing","10":"tag-monster-energy","11":"tag-nascar","12":"tag-race-car","13":"tag-racing","14":"tag-series","15":"tag-speed","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-toyota","18":"tag-united-states","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-xfinity-series"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114843247198817747","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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