Shane van Gisbergen was the class of the field in Sunday’s (May 10) Go Bowling at the Glen. While a good half of the field gambled trying to beat him on fuel strategy, SVG took fresh tires around 25 laps left in the running. He then went on to drive from over 29 seconds back to pass Ty Gibbs for the lead with seven laps to go.
Van Gisbergen captured his first NASCAR Cup Series win of the season, the seventh of his career and his second at Watkins Glen International.
Van Gisbergen scored great points early in the race after gaining a few points in stage one and outright winning stage two. He wound up walking away with 68 points in total after leading 74 of the 100 laps in the event.
While he has been on a historical run at the road courses, making NASCAR history almost any time he’s taken the track, he was a day away from adding his name to another stat sheet of drivers who have won Cup races on their birthdays, as his was yesterday, on May 9. SVG will enjoy a late birthday present by scoring his first win in the No. 97, which holds a lot of family significance for him.
“Unbelievable to win with 97,” van Gisbergen told FOX Sports post-race. “It’s not easy, everyone’s really good, there’s a lot of pressure there. I think (Michael) McDowell was good, Connor (Zilisch) was good, Tyler Reddick. There were some really good guys.”
The race was relatively tame apart from one caution that came out in stage two for debris, when an entire tent got lifted from the infield into the air by the winds and got spat out onto the track around the exit of the esses. That was until Joey Logano had a flat left-front tire that brought out the caution, leading to a mix of fuel strategies among the field.
SVG’s Trackhouse Racing teammate Connor Zilisch was a factor as well for the win, as he battled with Gibbs on the alternate strategy before van Gisbergen caught the pair. Unfortunately for the rookie phenom, Zilisch wore out the right-front tire over the course of the run and it finally gave out once his teammate caught him for second. As a result, Zilisch wound up 20th.
“Just upset. I mean, at the worst, I was going to finish in the top five probably and have my best day in the series by far,” Zilisch told Frontstretch post-race. “It’s just frustrating when you’re so close, it sucks.”
Michael McDowell followed suit in second after starting there alongside SVG to start the event. McDowell was on the same strategy as the No. 97 but he didn’t have the same pace as SVG.
“You know, there was moments where I thought, ah, maybe we could hang with SVG,” McDowell told FOX Sports. “It felt like he was just pacing himself off me, he’d take back off.”
The third Trackhouse driver, Ross Chastain, scored a win in stage one and looked to be close to his two teammates, but after he got stuck in the back, he never recovered from the mid-pack chaos and ended the day in 27th.
A trio of Toyotas rounded out the top five with the aforementioned Gibbs in third, Chase Briscoe in fourth and Tyler Reddick snagging fifth.
Austin Dillon finished sixth and AJ Allmendinger found himself in seventh. Kyle Busch was en route to score his first top five of the season on the last lap before he ran out of gas and wound up eighth. The top 10 was finished out by the highest finishing Ford in Austin Cindric in ninth with John Hunter Nemechek right on his tail in 10th.
A lot of chaos in the rest of the field during the last run to the checkered flag affected the finishing results of a lot of teams. One incident saw the No. 21 of Josh Berry and the No. 51 of Cody Ware in disarray on the exit of turn 6. Bubba Wallace got spun in turn 1 and had a meeting of the minds with Christopher Bell in the pits after the race, but only words were exchanged between the pair of Toyota drivers.
Cup Results from Watkins Glen
Next week is All-Star weekend at Dover Motor Speedway. The All-Star Race will be held on Sunday, May 17, at 1 p.m. ET. FOX Sports 1 will be the home of all of the All-Star festivities.
How could this be true?? Fox TV called Conor Zilisch, who BTW was 33rd in points going into the race, the NASCAR “Phenom “. I think Fox should sponsor a one on one race between Conor “Phonem” Zilisch and Mini “GOAT” Tyrell, and give a large check to charity. Any network who would call Mini the best racer in NASCAR, should put up some money for that ridiculous comment. In fact, someone please interview Mini and ask him if he believes he is the GOAT.
It really ticks me off how nobody made it difficult for SVG to get by them over the last 20 laps. Not one driver. You would think they would be getting tired of it and maybe put a bumper on him or a block to at least slow down his momentum. They are either falling for the ridiculous hype of this guy by the tv crew or they are all happy getting a beat down every single freakin road course race by him. I’m downright embarrassed for the rest of these guys.
How could they? They were out of tires and saving fuel. SVG was lucky he didn’t plow into them when he was passing them.