A week after getting wrecked out of the San Diego NASCAR Cup Series race that everyone expected him to win with ease, Shane Van Gisbergen got back to his winning ways in a big way.
Van Gisbergen won Saturday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Sonoma Raceway without much fuss ahead of his JR Motorsports teammate Connor Zilisch, but had his work cut out for him at the end of Sunday’s Cup Series race.
The Trackhouse Racing driver qualified a disappointing sixth, but led 74 of 110 laps in the race, including the last 23, and might not have been able to hold on for another.
Chase Briscoe, who started in seventh, got his No. 19 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota to within a second of Van Gisbergen’s Chevrolet in the closing laps as both cars struggled on old tires.
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The gap opened and closed like an accordion, as Briscoe gained under braking then fell behind through the track’s fast esses, and Briscoe looked like he had a shot to pass at the final hairpin, but only got as far as Van Gisbergen’s bumper.
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“We were really bad yesterday, and these guys did an amazing job turning this car into a winner. The 19 was coming. He was really, really good, and I ran out at the end,” Van Gisbergen said on the frontstretch after the race. “Yeah, a couple more laps we would have had some problems.”
The win was Van Gisbergen’s eighth on a road or street course and and moved him into contention for The Chase postseason at 14th in the points standings, but he knows it will be a struggle to stay there with oval tracks the rest of the way.
“Yeah, certainly helps us, but this is an oval championship, and I need to keep getting better at them,” he said.
Briscoe’s teammate Denny Hamlin had a surprisingly good day at the expense of Tyler Reddick, who drives for him at 23XI Racing. Reddick is a road course ace and should’ve finished far ahead of Hamlin to hold onto his lead at the top of the points standings, but ran into mechanical issues and finished dead last in 36th while Hamlin came home in 26th. That was good enough for Hamlin to leapfrog to the top with a two-point cushion going into Chicagoland Speedway next Sunday.
