Heading into Sunday’s (June 21) NASCAR Cup Series race at Naval Base Coronado, there were arguably two favorites: Trackhouse Racing’s road course aces Shane van Gisbergen and Connor Zilisch.
Another sleeper pick emerged throughout the weekend after the speed he had shown in practice and qualifying, as well as him scoring the victory in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race the day before: Austin Hill.
And following a lap 30 caution when the No. 20 of Brent Crews, an in-race relief driver for the injured Christopher Bell, was unable to continue, it was those three drivers — Zilisch, van Gisbergen and Hill — who found themselves leading the pack on the restart.
The trio charged into the blind corner in turn 1 post-restart. None of them survived the corner.
After a brief moment where all three drivers went three-wide before van Gisbergen backed off, Hill, on the inside, pushed tight into the door of Zilisch’s No. 88, which triggered a pileup.
When the dust settled, all three drivers were no longer in the running to win the inaugural Cup race at the San Diego street course.
“Yeah, real shame,” van Gisbergen told Frontstretch after his exit. “Red Bull Chevy was fast, rubbered up, and yeah, real shame.”
While van Gisbergen didn’t ultimately have much to say on the incident, his Trackhouse teammate, who led multiple laps prior to the crash, was more verbose.
“He was pretty far from the wall and didn’t give me any space, so I wouldn’t call it agressive,” Zilisch said. “I’d call it a little more egregious than that, but that’s how it goes sometimes.”
The biggest hit came for Zilisch out of the three following a rough summer stretch in his rookie year. Nonetheless, he’s still looking ahead — such as to next week at Sonoma Raceway, where he’ll likely be one of the favorites again.
“I mean, just gotta put your head down and forget about this weekend and move on to the next,” Zilisch said. “You never wanna have a day like this and you cost yourself what was gonna be a really good day for both Shane and I. But yeah, that’s how it goes sometimes.”
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