ALTHOUGH he hasn’t been penalised by NASCAR for his Chicagoland run-in with Austin Hill, Shane van Gisbergen is still set to meet with officials from the sanctioning body this weekend in Atlanta.
The incident has been at the centre of post-race talk this week, after van Gisbergen made contact with Hill’s Chevrolet, which then backed into the wall, resulting in race-ending damage.
Subsequently, Hill sideswiped SVG’s #97 under caution – an incident that also escaped penalty.
In two of the three weeks leading up to the coming together, Hill was involved in incidents that affected van Gisbergen’s Pocono and San Diego races.
The pair had a history of on-track encounters dating back to the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series in 2024.
The lack of penalty for the Kiwi is crucial for his hopes for making a second Cup Series postseason run.
As it stands, he retains 14th place in the standings, with a slim buffer to the top-16 Chase cut-off.
“We want to have a discussion and make sure that it doesn’t boil over into a significant problem at Atlanta or beyond,” said Mike Forde, NASCAR vice president of racing communications, on the Hauler Talk podcast.
“We looked to see if there were any anomalies throughout the race and something that spurred this that maybe was payback from earlier.
“We went through all the radio transmissions to see if there was anything that rose to kind of a smoking gun.
“Camera angles and all available resources, as we always say, and nothing in our eyes proved definitively this was 100 per cent intentional and penalty-worthy.”
In the past, radio transmissions have proved crucial in penalties for drivers such as Ryan Preece and Denny Hamlin.
“There’s enough reasonable doubt to where it didn’t rise to the penalty for us here,” said Forde.
“If you remove that reasonable doubt, then you’re going to get a penalty.
“If you say you’re going to do it and then do it, that is going to rise to the level of a penalty.”
Following his trip to the NASCAR hauler, SVG will be looking for a repeat of his sixth-place result from earlier in the season in Atlanta, which, since its refurbishment, races akin to a superspeedway track.
“It’s like a superspeedway on steroids,” said van Gisbergen.
“Your brain is just fried at the end; you’re flat out the whole time and always in a battle. You’re hanging on, that’s for sure.
“It’s one of my better tracks. I always seem to go well there, but it’s a crazy place to race.
“It’s tough; the next seven weeks are going to be crucial for us to get into the playoffs.
“We have to be consistent every week, do the best we can and don’t get involved in anything silly. Just continue to be there every week.”
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