I know how much workarounds are frowned upon around here, but if you really just want to git 'er done:
 
- Temporarily route the track that needs to be earlier direct to to Main Outs (or to a bus that's parallel to Master).
- Put Channel Tools or some other sample delay on the Master bus.
- Tweak the Master Bus delay until the relative timing of the tracks sounds like you want.
- Transfer the resulting offset to the clip in the track that needs to be earlier by nudging.
- Re-route the track back to Master, and delete Channel Tools.

Dreamstation
Someone mentioned Studio One - does that have a built-in audio track timing offset, where the audio can be nudged forward a few ticks?

 
More than a few ticks, and in both directions (up to +100 and -100 ticks).
I think it's OK to mention a feature of another DAW here, as it could motivate the Bakers to implement it.   

brundlefly
I know how much workarounds are frowned upon around here, but if you really just want to git 'er done:
 
- Temporarily route the track that needs to be earlier direct to to Main Outs (or to a bus that's parallel to Master).
- Put Channel Tools or some other sample delay on the Master bus.
- Tweak the Master Bus delay until the relative timing of the tracks sounds like you want.
- Transfer the resulting offset to the clip in the track that needs to be earlier by nudging.
- Re-route the track back to Master, and delete Channel Tools.

This work-around shows some great "outside the square" thinking and I'm impressed with the logical solution.  However it's fairly convoluted, and where it falls short is in the flexibility of adjusting and setting different channels on the fly, setting and forgetting, and maybe coming back to later - shifting one track a little that way, shifting another, making these little adjustments to help the groove work a little better - in a creative sense.  Bottom-line is that the Studio One channel offset mentioned by icontakt above, where it exists as a widget on a channel (and how it already exists on a Sonar midi channel), is simple and ideal - I would *love* to see that implemented in Sonar!

Yeah, you wouldn't want to have to do that all the time. I have to say it's a little surprising this hasn't come up more frequently. Being a MIDI guy, I don't encounter this need very often, but I can see why you'd want to have a simple offset control for audio.

As someone who uses demanding instruments and effects I think the OP has a wonderful feature request here. It doesn't seem like it would be all that hard to implement...