Sonoma Raceway’s first repave in over two decades has created impressive speeds and concerns about the durability of the new asphalt.

Joey Logano won the pole for today’s race on the wine country road course with a lap speed of 97.771 mph, with Tyler Reddick (97.661 mph) and Ryan Blaney (97.566 mph) rounding out the top three. Last year, Denny Hamlin took the pole with a lap of 92.178 mph.

But the repave hasn’t been perfect and patches of the track appeared to break apart during an April sports car test on the road course.

The breakage required immediate repairs and plenty of patches that had NASCAR drivers concerned about the track surface ahead of the race.

“I definitely had a lot of concerns coming in, I have some friends who do some of the road racing stuff and they come out here and run and just said how bad it was coming apart,” Chase Elliott said Friday after a 50-minute practice session.

“That was concerning, right, because our cars are way heavier than most of these other series. But I didn’t see anything visually on the track and I’m sure they will inspect it later. But I was super concerned coming here and honestly now feel a lot better.”

But will the surface remain intact over an entire three-day weekend?

“I’m not sure about that. I’m no expert in it by any means,” Hamlin said. “But definitely I think these cars will test it more than any other series that comes here. Our cars are so heavy and that’s going to push the track to the limit.”

Xfinity Series

Shane van Gisbergen raced to his second straight Xfinity victory, winning from the pole at Sonoma Raceway to further build his reputation as one of the best road racers in NASCAR.

The former rugby player then autographed a rugby ball and kicked it into the grandstands — same as last week in Oregon — following a crowd-pleasing burnout of thick plumes of white smoke.

In his first full season of NASCAR competition, the New Zealander is running a mixed schedule with several teams in a development program for Trackhouse Racing. The star from Australian V8 Supercars earned the job after winning the Cup race on the Chicago street course in his NASCAR debut.

He raced to his first career Xfinity win last week on the road course at Portland, and followed it Saturday with his first career pole in qualifying.

Sheldon Creed finished second and was followed by Sam Mayera and Austin Green and Hill.

IndyCar

Linus Lundqvist called it one of the craziest rounds of qualifying he’d ever encountered.

And it gave the 25-year-old Swede one of the biggest highlights of his rookie season with IndyCar.

Lundqvist earned his first career pole on a rainy day at Road America after posting a lap of 1 minute, 45.1519 seconds on the 14-turn, 4.014-mile road course. He’s the first rookie to win a pole since Romain Grosjean in the Indianapolis Grand Prix in May 2021.

“Growing up in Sweden, half the races we did were in the rain,” Lundqvist said. “I’m pretty comfortable there.”

Colton Herta, who had the pole at Road America last year, will start second this time. Rounding out the top five qualifiers were Marcus Armstrong, Kyle Kirkwood and Will Power.

Formula One

George Russell edged Formula 1 points leader Max Verstappen on a tiebreaker for the pole position in the Canadian Grand Prix.

Russell and Verstappen had identical laps of 1 minute 12.000 seconds at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, with the Mercedes driver getting the top spot Sunday by setting the time first. It’s the second time F1 qualifying has ended in a tie since the start of three-decimal timing.

Now Russell faces the challenge of keeping Red Bull star Verstappen behind him in the race.

“Why not? Of course. Let’s go for it,” Russell said. “The car has been feeling amazing. Since we brought some upgrades to Monaco, we’ve sort of really been in that fight now. We’re going for it tomorrow.”