Shane van Gisbergen hasn’t exactly been in the habit of making mistakes this year. In fact, days after putting pen to paper on a fresh contract extension with Trackhouse Racing, the Kiwi turned Watkins Glen into his personal victory lap Sunday, leading a caution-free final stage to score his fourth consecutive road course win.
That puts him in some pretty exclusive company—joining Chase Elliott and Jeff Gordon as the only drivers to pull off four road course wins in a row.
Last year at The Glen, van Gisbergen was on the verge of victory until a late restart and a final-lap bobble handed Chris Buescher the win.
This year: Same players. Same script. Different ending.
Buescher once again had his shot, but this time Christopher Bell got in the way. Their late-stage squabble gave van Gisbergen the breathing room to cruise off into the New York wilderness. The caution-free run to the flag let him build a gap the size of a small vineyard—crossing the line 11 seconds ahead of Bell, who snatched second on the final lap.
“Good to get that one back,” van Gisbergen said. “What an awesome race. The last stint was a bit cleared out, but the battle coming back through I had a lot of fun.
“Car was just amazing again. To get another win, and I definitely gave that Bus Stop wall another meter on that last lap, but yeah, awesome.”
Buescher settled for third, with William Byron and Chase Briscoe rounding out the top five.
“We had a really fast race car again, just definitely took the opportunity to capitalize on some big stage points there early,” Buscher said. “Still got back up into second there and was making some pretty good headway. But just used it up really hard trying to get by a couple cars and get to that track position, and fell off pretty hard there at the end.”
Ryan Blaney’s weekend was a pleasant surprise by his own admission. After snatching the pole from van Gisbergen on Saturday, Blaney led nearly all of Stage 1 while SVG coolly told his crew he was “saving his tires.” Blaney only gave up the lead to Buescher when pit road closed before the stage end.
The early action was otherwise tame—apart from Kyle Larson looping it on Lap 7. What looked like a minor spin turned into major heartbreak when he parked it in the garage with brake issues. His regular season championship hopes—already a knife fight with teammates Byron and Elliott—took a serious dent.
Buescher’s gamble to stay out won him Stage 1, but the roll of the dice started looking like snake eyes pretty quickly in Stage 2. Elliott’s version of the strategy was even worse—falling out of the top 10, then the top 20, before bailing for fresh tires just before a minor dust-up between Bubba Wallace, Ty Dillon, and Josh Berry brought out the race’s lone non-stage-break caution for debris.
Blaney grabbed Stage 2 honors after SVG pitted just before the break, with only a minor Legacy Motor Club scuffle between Erik Jones and John Hunter Nemechek to spice things up.
From there, the final stage was really just a countdown clock. Blaney led Byron and Bell to green on Lap 44, but SVG, armed with fresher tires, came charging from 12th to the lead in just 10 laps. Buescher made it to second again with 15 to go, but this time there was no fairy tale ending. No caution. No mistake. Just SVG disappearing into the distance, setting a new NASCAR Cup Series rookie record for most wins in a season.
Blaney faded to sixth but could at least say he’d led more laps on a road course—35—than in his entire career combined. Daniel Suárez came home seventh, then the 23XI duo of Bubba Wallace and Tyler Reddick, with Ross Chastain finishing 10th.
Perhaps no one summed up the day for the rest of the field better than Christopher Bell who finished a distance second.
“Frustrated to get our butts kicked by the 88 (Shane van Gisbergen) car,” Bell said. “He’s doing a really good job. That team has it going on.”
Next stop: Richmond, where Austin Dillon’s controversial win last year still has tempers simmering.
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.
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