And just like that, the narrative that Shane van Gisbergen, arguably the greatest road course racer in NASCAR Cup Series history, can’t win at Circuit of the Americas has been ripped to shreds. On Saturday afternoon, the New Zealand native put in a dominant performance in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series Focused Health 250.
Van Gisbergen would be able to hold off all challengers on the final restart of the race, which came with five laps to go. At the checkered flag, only one driver, Austin Hill, was within a second of van Gisbergen, who captured the win by a margin of victory of 0.780 seconds.
The 36-year-old, who was piloting the No. 9 SafetyCulture Chevrolet for JR Motorsports, admitted that he had a bit of apprehension going into that final late-race restart.
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“I wondered what was going to happen on that last restart, and I kind of sucked [Sam Mayer] in, and he took everyone out for me, so that was cool,” van Gisbergen chuckled.
In the 65-lap event, van Gisbergen led a race-high 31 laps, and he would turn the Xfinity Fastest Lap with a 1 minute, 39.452 second lap time on Lap 61 of the race. Heading into Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series DuraMax Texas Grand Prix, van Gisbergen is just happy he could finally exorcise his COTA demons on Saturday.
“Yeah, good to finally execute, we had an awesome day,” van Gisbergen said. “Thank you to SafetyCulture and JR Motorsports, the pit crew was awesome, you know, the strategy worked out well.”
Van Gisbergen continued, “What an awesome day, glad to finally win here. Hopefully, we can have a good day tomorrow.”
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Hill, who won the season-opening event at Daytona International Speedway, was proud of his runner-up finish, but says he just couldn’t match van Gisbergen’s pace on the final restart.
“I mean, I just got beat up, man-to-man,” Hill stated. “He was just better than me over those five laps. I had a great restart. I could have done a little bit better by staying tight to the guy in front of me. Maybe that doesn’t let him get down in front of me.”
Although it wasn’t a win, the runner-up finish continued the excellent start to the season for Hill, who maintained his series point lead on Saturday.
Sammy Smith, the driver of the No. 8 JR Motorsports Chevrolet, came home with a solid third-place finish as he continues to assert himself as a sneaky-good road racer, and he was followed to the finish line by Jesse Love, the defending series champion.
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Love vaulted forward in the championship standings two positions, and now sits second in the point standings, and is 28 points behind Hill.
Corey Day, the Hendrick Motorsports developmental driver, would finish fifth, but he would miff Connor Zilisch after a late-race incident that led to Zilisch finishing a disappointing 21st.
Day explained after the race that he had a part underneath the front end of his car that faltered, which led to problems in the high-speed corners at Circuit of the Americas. He says that the incident wasn’t intentional by any means.
“Yeah, he got right in front of me there, and as soon as he did, and you know, crossed over my nose, I lost the little bit of what I had left, or got in front of me where his air was on me. So, yeah, I’m going to get no sympathy for that on my track record. But yeah, wasn’t intentional,” Day explained. “Didn’t want to wreck him or have that happen.”
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Zilisch, who rallied back through the field after brake issues and was in position to collect a top-five finish, was in no mood to hear excuses for the incident. He feels that Day needs to simply figure out how to correct his driving going forward.
“Yeah, I mean, I think everybody saw what happened. I don’t need to explain myself,” Zilisch said. “But really unfortunate. Our Roto-Rooter Chevrolet was really fast. We had to change the left rear brake, and the entire caliper, and I hate that it ended like that for us. We were going to finish top-five there, and same guy every week that does this. Hopefully, he can figure it out.”
17-year-old Brent Crews finished sixth in his series debut, and impressed mightily by leading five laps in the race.
William Sawalich, Justin Allgaier, Ross Chastain, and Brennan Poole rounded out the top-10 finishers in Saturday’s Focused Health 250.
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Next up for the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series is the GOVX 200 at Phoenix Raceway, which is scheduled for Saturday, March 7. That race will be televised on The CW, and television coverage is slated to begin at 7:30 PM ET. The Motor Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio will provide the radio broadcast of that race.
Focused Health 250 Race Results
1. 9-Shane van Gisbergen
2. 21-Austin Hill
3. 8-Sammy Smith
4. 2-Jesse Love
5. 17-Corey Day
6. 19-Brent Crews
7. 18-William Sawalich
8. 7-Justin Allgaier
9. 32-Ross Chastain
10. 44-Brennan Poole
11. 00-Sheldon Creed
12. 54-Taylor Gray
13. 0-Alex Labbe
14. 41-Sam Mayer
15. 20-Brandon Jones
16. 39-Ryan Sieg
17. 31-Blaine Perkins
18. 27-Jeb Burton
19. 91-Carson Kvapil
20. 48-Patrick Staropoli
21. 1-Connor Zilisch
22. 45-Lavar Scott
23. 96-Anthony Alfredo
24. 28-Kyle Sieg
25. 25-Nick Sanchez
26. 26-Dean Thompson
27. 50-Preston Pardus
28. 42-JJ Yeley / Brad Perez
29. 24-Harrison Burton
30. 99-Parker Retzlaff
31. 88-Rajah Caruth
32. 51-Jeremy Clements
33. 87-Austin Green
34. 02-Ryan Ellis (-1 lap)
35. 55-Sage Karam (OUT)
36. 07-Josh Bilicki (OUT)
37. 30-Baltazar Leguizamon (OUT)
38. 35-Austin J. Hill (OUT)
This article was originally published on www.si.com/onsi/racing-america as SVG Proves He Can Win At COTA With O’Reilly Series Victory Over Hill.
