Alfredo Opens Sonoma Weekend With Comfortable Pace

Anthony Alfredo in action Friday at Sonoma Raceway. (Danny Hansen/Nigel Kinrade Photography)

SONOMA, Calif. – For a driver who doesn’t label himself as “particularly strong on the road courses,” Anthony Alfredo looked awfully comfortable Friday turning both left and right.

After posting a top-10 lap in practice, Alfredo qualified 13th for the Pit Boss/FoodMaxx 250 at Sonoma Raceway, showing solid and consistent speed at the 1.99-mile, 12-turn natural terrain circuit in Northern California.

The 25-year-old from Ridgefield, Conn., posted a time trial lap of one minute, 16.372 seconds (93.804 mph) in the No. 42 DUDE Wipes Chevrolet for Young’s Motorsports, virtually matching his practice speed and contending among the likes of Haas Factory Team, JR Motorsports, and Joe Gibbs Racing.

For a smaller-budget team like Alfredo’s, that’s a big start to the weekend, even though the road courses are often viewed as more of an equalizer for teams compared to the traditional downforce tracks.

“Honestly, at some of the road courses it’s still tough, because I feel like we’re still at a big resource disadvantage,” Alfredo explained. “But I’m really proud of my Young’s Motorsports team; this is a great rebound from last week [after an engine failure at the Chicago Street Course]. We’ve had a lot of issues, and they’ve still been digging really hard to get us where we need to be.

“I feel like our speed has been where it’s supposed to be, most of the time, but we’ve just had a lot of mechanical failures to deal with and other things that have happened … so it felt really good to go out there and have the pace in our DUDE Wipes Chevrolet consistently,” he added. “We didn’t mock up for a qualifying lap [at the end of practice] like a lot of the other guys did, and we were third on raw pace at that point behind Shane [van Gisbergen] and Connor [Zilisch], so that’s pretty good for me not being a road course guy.

“I believe I know where I need to be at this track and I’m really happy with the car so far; now we just have to execute all day through the race.”

While Alfredo has battled to find speed at some of the more technical road courses on the NASCAR calendar, he has a comfort level with Sonoma due to its connected rhythm from turn to turn.

“This is one of my favorite road courses, just because of how flowy it is,” he said. “With a lot of elevation changes, it’s about momentum and rolling speed, which are both things that I’m good at. It’s the stop-and-go places that I need to work on, so turn 11 here is kind of the only place like that compared to some of the other road courses on the schedule. But even there, I felt good in practice.

“Sonoma just has a lot of track character. It’s really fast now, after the repave [from 2024], but it seems like there will still be some tire fall off that we’ll have to pay attention to,” continued Alfredo. “If we can do that and stay on the right side of the strategy, I feel like we can put ourselves in position for a great day as long as our luck gets on the positive side again.”

In two prior Sonoma Xfinity Series starts, Alfredo has an average finish of 34th, but paces near or inside the top 20 on most of the other road courses that the tour visits throughout the season.

If he can better his average in Wine Country, Alfredo will likely continue his climb toward the top 20 in the regular season standings, and move closer to a shot at winning his way into the playoffs as well.

Broadcast coverage of the Pit Boss/FoodMaxx 250 airs Saturday afternoon at 4:30 p.m. ET, live on The CW, the Performance Racing Network, and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, channel 90.