Shane van Gisbergen swept NASCAR’s Sonoma weekend for the second straight year, winning in the O’Reilly’s Auto Parts Series on Saturday and the NASCAR Cup Series on Sunday.
This is van Gisbergen’s second win of the year for Trackhouse Racing and eighth win since his breakout victory in his first NASCAR Cup Series Start nearly four years ago in the inaugural Chicago Street race. With eight wins, the Supercars champion is just one win shy of matching Jeff Gordon’s long-held road course record in the Cup Series.
Since that win, van Gisbergen has gone on to win eight of his 16 road course starts, including an astounding five wins last year during his rookie campaign. This year hasn’t been as kind to van Gisbergen, with the road course schedule in NASCAR cut from six to four, losing Mexico City, Chicago, and the Charlotte ROVAL, and the addition of the San Diego Coronado Street Race. The New Zealand driver’s win rate now sits at 50% for the year and his career.
Last week, van Gisbergen had his first DNF on a road course following a crash with his teammate Connor Zilisch and Richard Childress Racing’s Austin Hill. Sonoma was the spot of his redemption, sweeping the weekend.
Van Gisbergen started sixth and flipped both stages, going for the overall win ahead of stacking points, as it’s likely that, with the new Championship structure, the Trackhouse Racing driver will not make it into The Chase this year. With that, Ty Gibbs, who captured the first Road Course pole of his Cup career, swept the stages. Gibbs would go on to finish third behind his teammate Chase Briscoe.
Zilisch recorded his first top ten in the Cup Series to end an abysmal streak of five DNFs in six races.
For the first time this year, 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick is not leading the championship. Mechanical issue sent the championship leader to the pits early in stage one, where he lost six laps. He would go on to complete the race, regaining two laps, things to wave around, but still record a last place to finish in 36th.
At one point during the race, Reddick’s biggest competitor and his boss, Denny Hamlin, sat with more than a 30-point buffer above his driver. This buffer all but deteriorated when Hamlin was spun from behind by Brad Keselowski, who got into Carson Hocevar. Hamlin rebounded to finish 26th, just high enough to grab the points lead from Reddick. Hamlin leads Reddick by a single point with eight races remaining in the regular season.
Victoria Beaver is a nomadic sports writer who spends her time hopping between race tracks and hippie farms. She’s covered every corner of motorsports that will let her in from 410 Sprints to NASCAR to Supercross. Her daily driver is a 2010 Subaru that she refused to do the smallest amount of preventative maintenance on. Instead, she spends her free time and money building a 42-foot Skoolie to one day travel the country full time.