Secure your spot today.<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cPretty amazing day, right from the start I could feel that the changes of the car were better and was able to manage the gap at the start,\u201d said van Gisbergen of his latest Sonoma success.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe flipped both stages trying to keep the track position. I was a bit surprised that the #1 car (Connor Zilisch) didn\u2019t at the second stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen it was just fuel-saving mode and trying to manage. The car was amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Marcos](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/WGI_080914_Burnout.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Marcos Ambrose took the last of his five NASCAR O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series race wins in 2014 at Watkins Glen.<\/p>\n
Van Gisbergen has a chance to become the equal second most successful road course racer in NASCAR Cup Series history on Monday.<\/p>\n
As it stands, he sits level with Hendrick Motorsports\u2019 Chase Elliott on seven wins. Only Tony Stewart (eight) and Jeff Gordon (nine) are ahead.<\/p>\n
Van Gisbergen, who will start the Cup Series race from sixth, said the team has room to improve his Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet Camaro.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy car was pretty subpar, to put it nicely,\u201d van Gisbergen explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe definitely need to improve it. It was a bit of a struggle really. I\u2019m not sure how much [being in] group one affected us.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously we were. Pretty reasonable out of group one and there were some good cars in there, but people smoked us in group two \u2013 so we need to make some improvements.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the areas we can adjust we can make big improvements. It\u2019s just the magnitude of how much to go, but we\u2019ve had bad cars before and made them come alive on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pretty confident my guys can make it better and yeah, should be a bit of fun trying to move forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was able to download as much as I could and especially not getting the pole gave us a bit more time,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI try and do it straight away because I forget after doing another whole race, I forget what happens. I gave as much detail as I could earlier today.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van Gisbergen enters Monday\u2019s race needing to dig himself out of a hole.<\/p>\n
He elected not to take stage points at San Diego and paid the price when he was wrecked during a restart.<\/p>\n
Below the cut line, van Gisbergen said he\u2019s in a sticky spot trying to maximise the opportunity ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s always the tough thing. You want to score stage points, but then you can bury yourself in the pack. You can\u2019t really strategise around it,\u201d van Gisbergen explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were at the front of the pack last week and it happened, so it\u2019s just one of those things \u2013 that\u2019s racing and in the Cup Series ,it\u2019s crazy.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery restart and every big moment like that, everyone\u2019s fighting for everything they can get<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve just got to manage it yourself and it\u2019s risk versus reward as always.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NASCAR Cup Series Toyota\/Save Mart 350 gets underway at 5:30am AEST.<\/p>\n
Van Gisbergen spins in Sonoma Cup Series qualifying<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shane van Gisbergen celebrates winning the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Sonoma. Van Gisbergen clinched his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,36945,806,805,803,804,9909,6490,85],"class_list":["post-765338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-marcos-ambrose","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-shane-van-gisbergen","tag-slot3","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Van](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/HL3lCLaWIAA4kqE-copy.jpg\")
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