Shane van Gisbergen Sweeps Sonoma Weekend

Shane van Gisbergen sweeps the weekend at Sonoma Raceway. For the eighth time in his NASCAR Cup Series career and the second time this season, the driver of the No. 97 goes to victory lane.

“What a day, we were really bad yesterday and these guys did an amazing job getting this car better,” SVG said. “The 19 was coming, he was really really good and I ran out at the end.”

Chase Briscoe kept him honest, running him down the entire final run and keeping himself in contention until the final corner.

“It was odd,” Briscoe said on battling with SVG. “I’m one of the few people to get close to him at the end of one of these road course races. I’m frustrated with myself, I feel like I definitely had the better car. I didn’t do as good of a job driving it as he did.”

The Race

Ty Gibbs and Carson Hocevar led the field to green. Gibbs led the entirety of the first stage to capture his second stage win of the season. Christopher Bell, Michael McDowell, Hocevar, and Ryan Preece rounded out the top-5 with Alex Bowman, Shane van Gisbergen, Erik Jones, Kyle Larson, and Riley Herbst rounding out the top-10.

In order to earn stage points, most of the leaders had to pit. This allowed SVG and Larson to stay out and take the green flag to Stage 2. The Kiwi led the entire stage until Lap 53, when he pit to flip the stage. Gibbs stayed out to sweep the stages, followed by Bell, A.J. Allmendinger, Austin Cindric, Ross Chastain, Zane Smith, SVG, Connor Zilisch, Briscoe, and Ryan Blaney.

Trackhouse teammates SVG and Zilisch led the field to the green for Stage 3. The teammates battled until the first natural caution of the day came out due to a mid-pack stack up. The ensuing restart saw several spins: Denny Hamlin, Todd Gilliland, Chase Elliott, and John Hunter Nemechek all spun within the first three laps.

SVG and Briscoe spent the rest of the race battling for the win, with the No. 97 getting the better of the No. 19.

Points Outlook

The two championship protagonists of Reddick and Hamlin both had issues. Reddick lost power steering in Stage 1 and fell six laps down. Reddick was able to get two laps back but this issue resulted in a 36th-place finish.

During Stage 3, Hamlin spun out and fell as low as 35th before recovering to a 26th-place finish. Due to this, the No. 11 exits the weekend with a two point lead over the No. 45.

A win from SVG moved him 34 points above the Chase cutline. A top-10 from Preece extended his lead to 13 points to the good, while Cindric falls to 16th, 12 points to the good and Erik Jones fell 12 points below the cutline. Keselowski and Allmendinger gained positions and now sit 25 and 26 points out respectively, while another difficult day for Joey Logano puts him 31 points out.

In-Season Challenge

Due to Reddick’s bad day, the No. 32 seeded Alex Bowman will advance to Round 2. Bowman will face Cindric, who battled hard with Chase rival Keselowski for position. The second of three upsets, Gilliland, will advance to face Hocevar due to the latter’s teammate’s struggles. Rounding out the left side of the bracket, the JGR teammates of Briscoe and Gibbs will battle and the final upset will see McDowell face Elliott.

On the other side of the bracket, Hamlin survived elimination from Ty Dillon to face Jones. Buescher and Bell will face off, as will the Hendrick teammates of Byron and Larson. Finally, race-winner SVG will face Blaney.

Notably, 23XI Racing is completely eliminated from the tournament one race in. Reddick and Wallace were upset by Bowman and McDowell, while Herbst was eliminated by Larson.

Results