{"id":500633,"date":"2026-02-26T10:50:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T10:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/500633\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T10:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T10:50:08","slug":"kevin-harvick-predicts-winner-for-nascar-cup-series-cota-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/500633\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Harvick predicts winner for NASCAR Cup Series COTA race"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The 2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.on3.com\/pro\/category\/nascar\/news\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">NASCAR<\/a> Cup Series season opened up with a pair of superspeedway races at Daytona International Speedway and EchoPark Speedway in Atlanta, respectively. The schedule in March sees a mix of ovals and short tracks, but there\u2019s one race left on the schedule in February. <\/p>\n<p>This Sunday, the Cup Series heads to Austin, Texas, for the DuraMax Texas Grand Prix Powered by RelaDyne at Circuit of The Americas (COTA), the first road course event of the campaign. It will be NASCAR\u2019s sixth trip to COTA, the first coming in 2021.<\/p>\n<p>The list of favorites has one name at the top: Shane van Gisbergen. The Trackhouse Racing driver won five of six road course races last season, and Kevin Harvick is picking him to win the first of the 2026 season, he said on \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=YChpA2cFQCI\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Happy Hour<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Van Gisbergen is the easy selection. But, the thing is, COTA was the one road course race he didn\u2019t win in 2025. He finished sixth in this race a year ago and 20th the year prior in his first go-around at the road course. He will be motivated to get it done this time around, coming off an impressive sixth-place finish at Atlanta.<\/p>\n<p>Who is capable of beating Shane van Gisbergen at COTA?<\/p>\n<p>Last year\u2019s winner, Christopher Bell, should be in contention. The same goes for Tyler Reddick, the 2023 COTA winner who has finished ninth or better in every start at the road course. <\/p>\n<p>But, the big question is whether Connor Zilisch can compete with SVG. The 19-year-old rookie matched van Gisbergen by picking up five road course wins in 2025, though in the O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series. They had an entertaining battle this past August at Watkins Glen International, which ended with Zilisch dumping van Gisbergen. <\/p>\n<p>Can Zilisch keep up with his Trackhouse teammate in just his sixth start in Cup? Zilisch believes he can.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI feel like I have the speed to do it,\u201d Zilisch said Tuesday. \u201cI just need to be able to run a perfect race to be able to beat him, and I think everybody\u2019s realized how difficult that is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season opened up with a pair of superspeedway races at Daytona International Speedway&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-500633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}