For most of Sunday, this looked less like a NASCAR Cup Series race and more like an uncomfortable exercise in inevitability.
Shane van Gisbergen had the pole. He had speed. He had track position. And once the Naval Base Coronado street circuit started laying down rubber, he had the kind of pace that makes the rest of the field start calculating which interview angle gives them the best “good points day” quote afterward.
Then came Lap 32.
What had been shaping up as a classic street course beatdown detonated into the first red flag in NASCAR Cup Series history at Naval Base Coronado.
A restart packed the field together and turned Turn 1 into a giant physics experiment nobody volunteered for. Nine cars were swept into the wreck: van Gisbergen, Connor Zilisch, Ryan Blaney, Daniel Suarez, Austin Hill, Riley Herbst, John Hunter Nemechek, Ty Gibbs and Michael McDowell.
And just like that, the race favorite was parked.
“A real shame,” van Gisbergen said afterward. “ (The) Red Bull Chevy (was) unreal and fast once the track kind of rubbered up. Just a real shame.”
That sentence probably undersells it.
Van Gisbergen had spent the entire weekend reminding everyone that road and street racing is his natural habitat. Practice looked comfortable. Qualifying looked controlled. Race day looked inevitable.
Until it wasn’t.
The cruel part is he wasn’t alone.
Trackhouse teammate Connor Zilisch had also put himself squarely into the conversation before becoming collateral damage in the same mess. The rookie led his first career Cup Series laps and looked completely at home at the front before his afternoon disappeared into concrete barriers and bent sheet metal.
“It’s just unfortunate to end the day like that for both Red Bull Chevrolet’s with Shane and I,” Zilisch said. “We had a really fast car today. We got out front and it felt really good.”
Zilisch admitted the team had been managing the race rather than attacking it.
“I felt like we were just pacing ourselves and trying to get to the end of the race. These races always get crazy towards the end.”
That turned out to be prophetic.
Austin Hill, who also became part of the pileup, owned his role in the incident afterward.
The Richard Childress Racing driver explained he carried more speed into Turn 1 than he had all day, started sliding, and simply ran out of room with Zilisch occupying the lane he needed.
“It’s one of those racing deals,” Hill said. “Right when I touched him and he got in the wall, it sucked me into him and I couldn’t stay off of him. I hate it for Connor and the No. 88 team, and I apologize to those guys.”
And that was the thing about San Diego.
Nobody involved sounded angry. Nobody sounded like they’d been wronged.
Just disappointed.
Because this wasn’t one of those crashes caused by desperation with five laps to go.
This was one caused by opportunity.
Van Gisbergen had the race in his hands. Zilisch had arrived as a legitimate threat. Hill had strategy and speed. Then one restart compressed all of it into a pile of carbon fiber, tire marks and what-could-have-beens.
For everyone else in the field, the wreck opened the door.
For the two Red Bull Chevrolets, it slammed shut.
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.
- Three Laps, One Cup debut, and a Very Short Story for Brent Crews - June 21, 2026
- The Restart That Broke San Diego’s Favorite - June 21, 2026
- Sam Mayer Sent the Field Into Turn 1 and the Wall Lost - June 20, 2026