Sunday’s (Aug. 10) Go Bowling at the Glen was a quick, cut-and-dry race where Shane van Gisbergen continued to etch his name in the record books.
He’s now won four consecutive road course races in the NASCAR Cup Series on different tracks, a feat matched only by Chase Elliott (2019-20) and surpassed by Jeff Gordon (1997-2000), who holds the all-time record of six straight.
Van Gisbergen also became the first driver in Cup history to win four road courses in a single season (a feat which has only been possible since 2021), and he’s batting 4-for-5 in 2025, with his only blemish being a sixth-place finish at Circuit of the Americas in March. Since then, he’s been perfect.
He has five wins in 38 Cup starts, which is the fastest a driver has reached five wins in NASCAR’s modern era. He also holds the record for most wins in a rookie season (four), surpassing Jimmie Johnson and Tony Stewart’s joint record of three. Oh, and did I mention that he’s now tied with Denny Hamlin for the most wins this season? Who would’ve predicted in February?
All four of van Gisbergen’s wins came in dominant fashion, and Watkins Glen International was no exception. He led the most laps and drove away from the field on the final green flag run, but this time he “only” won by 11.116 seconds over Christopher Bell. That’s good enough for the ninth-largest margin of victory in Cup since 1995, and van Gisbergen joins Martin Truex Jr. (2018) as the only drivers to win multiple races in a single season by over 10 seconds since 1995.
Furthermore, van Gisbergen now holds the two largest margins of victory on road courses in the same time span.
Shocking but true: the combined margin of victory of van Gisbergen’s wins this season is larger than the margin of victory for every other race.
Of course, all of van Gisbergen’s record setting has come on road courses; he still has a long way to go on ovals. His performance is an incredible feat regardless, but it’s a shame that the playoffs will put a blemish on what should be a great story, just as the they did with Harrison Burton’s upset win in last year’s Coke Zero Sugar 400.
The (Un)surprisingly Clean Race
Compared to the chaotic NASCAR Craftsman Truck and NASCAR Xfinity Series races at Watkins Glen earlier in the weekend, Sunday’s Cup race almost looked like an entirely different sport.
There was only one caution for cause, and the clean driving gave the Cup race a run time of two hours, 10 minutes and 39 seconds. Hilariously, it was the shortest race of the top three series by run time despite having more laps.
Is that a surprise? Not really. The vast majority of Cup races at Watkins Glen in the last 20 years have been completed in less than two-and-a-half hours, making it one of the quickest races on the Cup schedule.
Sunday became the fifth (out of 42) Watkins Glen races to record an average race speed greater than 100 mph, but the 2023 race, which became the first race in the entirety of NASCAR’s modern era to be completed in less than two hours, won’t be beaten unless stage breaks become a thing of the past.
Sunday also featured zero DNFs — the first such race in Cup history at Watkins Glen. Kyle Larson lost his brakes on lap six, went to the garage for 15 laps and returned, only to run dead last in a race with zero attrition. Beside Larson, every other car in the race finished within one lap of the leader.
Because of that, the all-time record for lead lap finishers in a Cup race was in jeopardy for much of the afternoon. The current record is 37 (of 43), set in a rain-shortened Michigan race in 2006. With 25 laps to go on Sunday, 38 cars (i.e. everyone except Larson) were running on the lead lap, but the long green flag run to the finish and van Gisbergen’s superhuman pace led to 35 lead-lap finishers, keeping the 19-year-old record of 37 intact.
Sunday also became the 17th race in Cup history to have every car finish, and with every car finishing at Iowa Speedway the week prior, this marked the first time in Cup history where every car finished in back-to-back races.
The all-time record for zero-DNF races is a season is three, set in 2016. There are 12 races left in 2025 for this year to either match or surpass that mark.
That mark could very well be tied at Richmond Raceway this Saturday (Aug. 16). Two of the last three Richmond races have featured zero DNFs, and last year’s race had zero cautions for cause until lap 399 of 400.
Could lightning strike thrice?
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf