There aren’t enough superlatives in the English vocabulary to successfully describe how good Shane van Gisbergen is at road course racing. However, words aren’t needed for one to understand. All you have to do to truly get it is watch the final 25 laps of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Go Bowling at The Glen at Watkins Glen International.
Race Results: Go Bowling at The Glen
Van Gisbergen, who was the class of the field all race long, seemingly found himself at a disadvantage on strategy, as a slew of drivers opted to make their final pit stops during a Lap 60 caution for debris in the esses.
Not van Gisbergen, Tyler Reddick, Michael McDowell, and a couple of others, they chose to stay on track in hopes that they would be able to stretch their lead out enough on those other cars, and then be able to run them back down on fresher tires in the closing laps of the race.
With 25 laps remaining, van Gisbergen would be called from the lead to serve his final pit stop of the day. This would drop the driver of the No. 97 Chevrolet to 25th-place, and it would place him 29 seconds behind Ty Gibbs, who had inherited the race lead.
In order to rally for the race win, SVG would have to slice 1.16 seconds off of Gibbs’ lead each lap for the entirety of the race. No problem.
Van Gisbergen cut three, or more, seconds off on some laps, and as the distance on track continued to shrink, van Gisbergen made his move for the race lead and win, through the bus stop with eight laps remaining.
The New Zealand native would pull away to take the win by 7.288 seconds over McDowell, who followed him to a runner-up finish on the same strategy.
“Unbelievable to win with 97. Yeah, Super File Chevy was great. Thank you to Trackhouse. We weren’t very good in practice, and then qualifying was amazing. Good tweaks, and then today, so what a race car,” van Gisbergen said. “Then [Crew Chief] Stephen [Doran] made great calls. I wasn’t sure how it was going to work. Then to run them down, very, very special to do two in a row.”
While he makes it look routine to win on road courses in the NASCAR Cup Series, van Gisbergen says it’s not an easy thing to do.
“…But it’s not easy. Everyone is really good. There was a lot of pressure there, and I think McDowell was good, Connor was good. Tyler Reddick. There were a lot of good guys and a lot of pressure,” van Gisbergen explained. “Just stoked for these guys, you know, to execute every facet of our game. Speechless. This is so cool.”
McDowell was proud to come home with a second-place finish on a day when he felt, at times, that he could match van Gisbergen’s speed.
“Yeah, it’s great. It’s great to get this Chevrolet in the top five. There were moments where I thought, oh, maybe we can hang with SVG, and it felt like he was just pacing himself back off me, and he would take back off,” McDowell said.
Gibbs, who was managing older tires and a dwindling fuel load, would fade to a third-place finish, ahead of Chase Briscoe and Tyler Reddick, who claimed a fifth-place finish to keep a firm hold of his series points lead.
The win is the seventh of van Gisbergen’s NASCAR Cup Series career, all of which have come on road courses, and the latest win comes in just his 62nd career start. The win also moved van Gisbergen back inside the top-16 of the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings with 14 races remaining until the Chase for the Cup begins.
Connor Zilisch was one of the few drivers in the field who was able to keep pace with van Gisbergen at points in the race. However, Zilisch, who was battling Gibbs for the race lead as van Gisbergen was marching through the field, would see his day come undone after a flat tire sent him to pit road with nine laps to go.
Zilisch would rally back to a 20th-place result, but it was a far cry from the top-two to three pace he showcased all race long.
