1. So Much for Shane van Gisbergen Only Winning on New Tracks
Despite the wins that Shane van Gisbergen has racked up since he first arrived in NASCAR, it’s been easy for some fans and observers to dismiss him a bit. He stinks on ovals. He’s only winning at tracks where the top stock car drivers haven’t figured out the circuits yet.
The former point may still be valid, but the latter certainly isn’t. Not after van Gisbergen flexed his road course muscles once again at Sonoma Raceway, leading 97 of the 110 laps en route to his third NASCAR Cup Series victory of 2025.
Unlike the Chicago street course and Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, both of which are relatively new to NASCAR’s top wheelmen, Sonoma has been a mainstay on the schedule for more than three decades. There’s been plenty of time for Cup Series drivers to figure the place out.
It’s fair to question whether van Gisbergen should have as high a spot in the playoff standings as he’s likely to get. He is, after all, still only 25th in points, a testament to how unimpressive he’s been on tracks with only left turns.
But there’s no debating this point: He’s good at whipping stock cars around road and street courses, even if they are places NASCAR knows well. The rest of the field has some work to do to get on his level regularly.
2. And SVG May be the Wins Leader Going into the Playoffs
While we ponder “what it all means” that SVG has as many wins as any other driver in the Cup Series despite not running up front at pretty much any oval, there’s one more fun wrinkle to his campaign: He could lead everyone in wins when the playoffs start.
That’s because the regular season is winding down and there’s still one road course race left at Watkins Glen International. Van Gisbergen hasn’t won there yet, but he was the runner-up in his lone Cup Series start there so far, and considering the heater he is on, why in the world would you bet against him?
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that SVG takes the checkered flag at the Glen. He’ll almost certainly be no worse than tied for the 2025 wins lead if he does, as no one else has more than three wins right now. Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell could all nab one, but it’s not out of the question that none of them win again before Darlington Raceway, given the way this season has gone in general.
If van Gisbergen stands alone in regular season wins after Daytona International Speedway, that would be something that will probably be discussed decades from now. Speaking of which …
3. Oh, and van Gisbergen Will Make the Title Chase More Interesting, Too
To be clear, there’s almost no chance van Gisbergen can win the Cup Series championship. There’s only one road course in the postseason, and it’s too far from the Championship 4 to get him there. A more plausible outcome is that he sneaks past the first round due to the number of playoff points he has, then wins the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL to make the Round of 8 before being unceremoniously dismissed.
Yet as long as we’re discussing fun hypotheticals, what if SVG wins at The Glen and the ROVAL and ends up with more victories than anyone else when 2025 comes to a close? That would feel like the complete inverse of what Matt Crafton did in 2019, claiming the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series crown despite winning no races that season.
The guess here is that most fans would be fine with SVG not figuring into the championship picture, given that there’s a pervasive feeling that the current system of deciding a champion puts too much emphasis on race wins and too little on consistency. Like Bonnie Raitt might say, it would at least give people something to talk about, and that’s a valuable commodity for NASCAR and the broader racing community.
4. But Will Kyle Larson Be Competing for the Championship in Earnest?
Look, no one is saying Larson is having a horrible 2025 campaign, nor should they. He has three wins, is third in points and has more playoff points stocked up than anyone else. There are easily two dozen drivers who would give up one of their smaller digits to switch places with him.
It’s just that since winning at Kansas Speedway in mid-May, Larson hasn’t been that Larson-like regularly. In the last eight races, he has three top-10 finishes, which isn’t horrible but is a step down from the seven he had in the eight prior races.
Larson has had especially horrible results at road courses, coming home 36th at Mexico City and 35th at Sonoma, to the point where he may now be the anti-SVG and very glad there aren’t many more left on this year’s calendar.
Add it all up and it’s going to be very interesting to see how Larson fares at Dover Motor Speedway, where he’s typically been great. Here are his finishes at The Monster Mile since 2019: 3, 1, 2, 6, 32, 2. If he and the No. 5 team aren’t in the mix there, something is amiss, and it will be time to start wondering if they just peaked too early this year.
5. The In-Season Challenge Might Be Headed for the Biggest Cinderella Finish Possible
Was the NASCAR In-Season Challenge intended to be full of surprises and mint an unexpected millionaire? Or was it supposed to end with two of the best in the Cup Series going mano a mano with that money on the line?
Neither of those outcomes is quite going to happen, but there definitely could be a driver walking away with the prize that no one would have figured had a chance when the tournament started. Ty Dillon, the No. 32 and lowest seed, is still alive and has a chance to drive for the million if he can finish ahead of John Hunter Nemechek at Dover.
Even after Atlanta Motor Speedway knocked out a good chunk of the top seeds, no one could have foreseen the tourney getting to exactly this point. Sports tend to have upsets at random moments before the cream rises to the top over time, and NASCAR is no different in that regard.
If Dillon wins, does it mean he just got lucky or that he performed best when it mattered most? In fairness, he enters this week on a run of three consecutive top-20 finishes, the only time he has done that all year.
So the correct answer is that it’s probably a little of both. Dillon has been the beneficiary of some good fortune, but he also hasn’t hurt his chances all that much. If that is what the In-Season Challenge was supposed to reward should he make it all the way through, then mission accomplished. If not, that gives NASCAR even more to chew on when it considers what to do with the competition for 2026.
