Who… should you be talking about after the race?
Another road course, another winning performance from Shane van Gisbergen. Van Gisbergen dominated at Watkins Glen International, winning the Go Bowling at the Glen by 11.116 seconds over Christopher Bell.
Ryan Blaney nipped van Gisbergen for the pole and led the opening 18 laps. Blaney also won the second stage and led a total of 35 laps, just three fewer than van Gisbergen on the day. But the second half was all SVG, who led three times for 38 total laps, including the last 16 after the final round of pit stops. Without so much as a single yellow flag in the last stage to give somebody else a chance, van Gisbergen made it look easy.
Well that made up for last year! Amazing day thank you to @WeatherTech and the @TeamTrackhouse 88 crew. Real special to have Dad and Ronald here too. Awesome 😀 pic.twitter.com/xqdp7cdq1D
— Shane van Gisbergen (@shanevg97) August 10, 2025
It’s his fifth career win and fourth of 2025, tying him for the most in the NASCAR Cup Series with Denny Hamlin.
On the other hand…
It was certainly not the day Kyle Larson or his fans expected. An early brake line failure sent Larson spinning early. He limped back to the garage, where his team replaced the lines and seals and got Larson back on track, but the damage was done.
Larson did get one lap back thanks to the free pass, but was unable to gain any positions before the day ended. Larson finished 39th, 15 laps down, despite posting the fastest lap of the race.
What… does this mean for the points standings?
William Byron remained on top over teammate Chase Elliott thanks to a fourth-place finish at the Glen. Elliott’s 26th-place finish means Byron now sits 42 points ahead of the pack with two races left to claim the regular season title.
After his brake failure on Sunday, Larson slipped to fifth while Hamlin and Bell each moved up one place.
Blaney moved up a spot to sixth, while Tyler Reddick slid to seventh. Chase Briscoe, Alex Bowman and Chris Buescher rounded out the top 10, with Buescher ousting Bubba Wallace for 10th.
Buescher also holds the final spot above the playoff cut line with two weeks left to set the field; he has a 34-point lead over teammate Ryan Preece after settling for a good points day with his third-place finish. He’s still not safe, but if there are no new winners, he can squeeze into the field.
Chris Buescher despises points racing. The No. 17 team's hand was forced on Sunday at Watkins Glen and it ended with the second-most points earned.
— Dustin Albino (@DustinAlbino) August 10, 2025
"It’s a tough decision, but unfortunately it’s the box we’re in."https://t.co/CyLZuRhd16
Preece holds steady as next in line below the cutoff. He’s got an outside chance to take the spot from Buescher. Kyle Busch is 102 points behind Buescher, so he’ll need a win to score a spot this year.
Where… did he come from?
One driver with a sneaky good finish on Sunday was Erik Jones. Jones started 29th and drove to 12th by the finish, despite an earlier tangle with Legacy Motor Club teammate John Hunter Nemechek.
Man, as soon as we got the car where we needed it, that turned into a lot of fun. P30 to P12 shows the work everyone put in today. Proud of the whole 43 group for finding speed on road courses.
— Erik Jones (@Erik_Jones) August 10, 2025
It’s Jones’ best finish since he came home fifth at Atlanta Motor Speedway six weeks ago. Since then, Jones had four finishes of 25th or worse, so Sunday’s solid run is a welcome turn of events on the heels of a 16th last week at Iowa Speedway.
When… was the moment of truth?
Van Gisbergen almost looked mortal throughout the first stage as Blaney had things well in hand, but beginning with the restart for the second stage, he served notice that the road to victory went through him and nobody could pay that toll.
SVG’s road course dominance has caused an uptick in teams trying different pit strategies, and racing should be a strategy game. That’s always been a part of it.
Had there been more cautions for cause on Sunday, the day might have played out differently. Paradoxically, eliminating the stage cautions on road courses would also have that effect.
Watkins Glen is a little different from some of the more technical road courses on the schedule; there are sections where speed is as important as technical prowess, and it’s slightly more forgiving of pushing boundaries thanks to its generous paved runoff areas. Whether that’s a good thing is debatable, though. The runoffs are perhaps too forgiving and drivers have learned to use them as part of the racing surface.
They were originally grass areas, which were later replaced with gravel for safety reasons. Cars slide easily on grass and there had been some heavy impacts. The traps were replaced with pavement because towing cars out of the gravel caused cautions when otherwise the cars might have continued, and getting into one ended a driver’s day.
Maybe the compromise is to make them less enticing, either by narrowing them and adding grass back or by painting the surface to make it slicker than staying on the racing surface.
Why… should you be paying attention this week?
There was a scary moment on Saturday, when Connor Zilisch, who won the Xfinity Series race, slipped and fell from the window of his racecar in victory lane, falling awkwardly to the ground and not moving. Zilisch was taken to a local hospital, where he was diagnosed with a broken collarbone. His No. 87 entry was withdrawn from Sunday’s Cup Series race.
It could easily have been much worse for the talented youngster, and having this week off will certainly help him rest and heal. But with the Xfinity playoffs just around the corner, will Zilisch be able to compete for the title, or will he miss several weeks?
Zilisch was in attendance on Sunday and said that he’s still consulting with medical personnel and has no timeline yet. NASCAR would most likely give Zilisch a playoff waiver if he sits out one or all of the three remaining regular season races, so that’s one less worry for him, but his chance of a title run is suddenly in question.
#NASCAR … Connor Zilisch told me is staying lighthearted after his injury and talks about his dad’s tweet from last night pic.twitter.com/XYKXH6EYo8
— Dustin Long (@dustinlong) August 10, 2025
The Cup Series now has just two races left until the playoff field is set. With three spots up for grabs, that means that at least one driver will get in on points, but there’s not a whole lot of security there as the series heads to Richmond Raceway for a Saturday night show.
Richmond favors veterans, with Kyle Busch topping the list of active winners with six trips to victory lane. Hamlin has a chance to tie him this weekend. Busch is among the drivers looking to steal a last-minute playoff berth as well as his Richard Childress Racing teammate Austin Dillon, won this event last year. His controversial method of knocking the two drivers in front of him out of the way to do it meant NASCAR penalized him by taking the playoff spot it would have earned him, though.
Another Richmond winner looking for a Hail Mary win is Brad Keselowski, who has seemingly found some speed in the last few weeks, though he had a rough day at the Glen. Larson would love some redemption too, and a third win at Richmond would certainly do it.
Also keep an eye on Bell. He has the best average finish at Richmond in the Cup field at 7.3, just ahead of Busch’s stellar 7.6 (with 29 more starts), though he hasn’t made it stick for a win yet.
How… did this race stack up?
It depends on what you compare it to. It falls right in line with most of this year’s road-course offerings: SVG leaving the rest of the field to wonder what might have been and if it’s even possible to beat him on these things. That’s more the nature of the beast when a driver is dominating than a reflection on the racing otherwise.
Still, the Glen has produced some excellent races, and this one just wasn’t one of them. And with a margin of victory of over 11 seconds, it wasn’t one of the better offerings of 2025.
Adding road courses to the schedule worked with the Gen 6 racecar; they raced better on the twists and turns than the Next Gen does. Dropping to three or maybe four, at the outside, makes sense. If NASCAR can’t adapt the car to the tracks, then it needs to adapt the schedule to the current car.
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.