{"id":507436,"date":"2026-03-01T13:36:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T13:36:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/507436\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T13:36:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T13:36:27","slug":"nascar-returns-to-road-racing-with-reddick-chasing-cup-series-history-vs-svg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/507436\/","title":{"rendered":"NASCAR returns to road racing with Reddick chasing Cup Series history vs. SVG"},"content":{"rendered":"

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) \u2014 Shane van Gisbergen<\/a> was so dominant on road courses last season than many had looked at NASCAR’s first road race of 2026 like it was already settled: SVG in a runaway.<\/p>\n

Hold on. Tyler Reddick’s pursuit of racing history may yet have a say in that.<\/p>\n

Reddick earned pole position for Sunday’s race at the Circuit of the Americas as the winner of the Daytona 500<\/a> and again last week at Atlanta<\/a> looks to become the first driver to win the first three races of the season.<\/p>\n

Van Gisbergen won five of six road races last season, and Sunday\u2019s race has been teed up as a fight between New Zealand’s road wizard and his 19-year-old Trackhouse rookie teammate, Connor Zilisch.<\/p>\n

But Reddick has history at COTA \u2014 he won a triple-overtime<\/a> crash-fest here in 2023 \u2014 and has the confidence of a driver who has no plans to surrender races to anyone for now. His win here in 2023 was his first with Michael Jordan’s 23XI Racing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt helps the chances certainly,” Reddick said of Sunday’s pole position. \u201cStarting up front is huge.\u201d<\/p>\n

But that was earned with speed over one lap. Beating van Gisbergen’s road course mastery over the 95 laps of a full race is something else indeed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just need to get as much of a head start on him as I can and try to stay ahead of him all day,\u201d Reddick said. <\/p>\n

Van Gisbergen will start from 13th and he’s chasing his own history. A sixth consecutive road course win would tie Jeff Gordon’s record set from 1997 to 2000 and leave him two shy of Gordon\u2019s career record of nine. <\/p>\n

As dominant as he was on road courses last season, van Gisbergen didn’t win at COTA, a racetrack originally built for Formula 1. He’d been expected to fight for pole but was well off the pace Saturday.<\/p>\n

Zilisch will start 25th and still figures to contend for the victory despite a difficult qualifying session. He made an impressive and fiery<\/a> Cup Series debut at COTA last year when he charged through the field in the second stage before a late wreck knocked him out.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Connor, it\u2019s exciting. (He\u2019s) a pretty cool talent coming into this level now, in the same equipment,\u201d van Gisbergen said. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zilisch said he learned a lot from racing last year against SVG in the second-tier O’Reilly series, where he won four road course races last season. Zilisch won pole position for Saturday’s undercard race with van Gisbergen right next to him.<\/p>\n

Van Gisbergen won a head-to-head battle between the drivers in the O\u2019Reilly series in Chicago last year when he pushed Zilisch into the wall on the final restart. A week later, Zilisch got the best of SVG in another tussle to win at Sonoma.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like I\u2019ve been able to run with him in those,\u201d Zilisch said. \u201cI feel like personally I can do it. But putting an entire race together, being consistent and not making mistakes … I feel like I have the speed to do, it but I feel like I have to run a perfect race to be able to beat him. I think everybody\u2019s realized how difficult that is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keselowski keeping Hand on hand<\/p>\n

Brad Keselowski plans to race Sunday as he continues recovery from a broken right leg. He raced in Daytona and Atlanta, but the road course in Austin is a different physical strain. He\u2019ll have sports-car ace Joey Hand available to step in if needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s going to take a lot for that to happen,\u201d Keselowski said. \u201cI’ll have to be either really slow, or really in pain … I’m a race car driver, that’s what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n

__<\/p>\n

AP auto racing: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/auto-racing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas (AP) \u2014 Shane van Gisbergen was so dominant on road courses last season than many had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-507436","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\/507436","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=507436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}