With 25 laps to go in Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Go Bowling at The Glen, Shane van Gisbergen, who had dominated the event, was staring up at a 29-second deficit to race leader Ty Gibbs. It seemed like pit strategy, the only thing that could conceivably defeat van Gisbergen and his No. 97 team on Sunday, had done just that.
There’s just one problem, van Gisbergen is simply too damn good in a NASCAR Cup Series car on a road course.
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As van Gisbergen ripped off qualifying lap times lap after lap, picking off positions on track in the process, it became very clear that the 29-second deficit would be made up by the time the checkered flag was waved.
However, nobody knew just how fast the deficit would be erased.
In the end, van Gisbergen only needed 18 laps to recoup the lost time on pit road, as he passed Ty Gibbs for the win with eight laps remaining.
The incredible rally through the field was capped by a flawless charge over the race’s final laps, which saw van Gisbergen cross the finish line ahead of Michael McDowell by a stunning margin of 7.288 seconds.
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Van Gisbergen’s weekend started with the New Zealand native displeased with his car’s performance in NASCAR Cup Series practice, but after some tuning by crew chief Stephen Doran, van Gisbergen was able to claim the pole position in qualifying. Additional changes overnight to the car put van Gisbergen in a league of his own in Sunday’s race.
Although he admits he initially questioned the strategy call made by Doran, which put him 29 seconds behind Gibbs in the closing laps, in the end, he believes his crew chief was right.
“Unbelievable to win with 97. Yeah, Super File Chevy was great. Thank you to Trackhouse. We weren’t very good in practice, and then qualifying was amazing. Good tweaks, and then today, so what a race car,” van Gisbergen said. “Then [Crew Chief] Stephen [Doran] made great calls. I wasn’t sure how it was going to work. Then to run them down, very, very special to do two in a row.”
While van Gisbergen cruised through the field seemingly at ease, the skilled road racer assured everyone that there’s nothing easy about defeating the talent level in the NASCAR Cup Series ranks at road course tracks.
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“…But it’s not easy. Everyone is really good. There was a lot of pressure there, and I think McDowell was good, Connor was good. Tyler Reddick. There were a lot of good guys and a lot of pressure,” van Gisbergen explained. “Just stoked for these guys, you know, to execute every facet of our game. Speechless. This is so cool.”
The win marks the seventh of van Gisbergen’s 62-race NASCAR Cup Series career, all of his wins have come on road course layouts, but this season, he has shown improved performance on oval tracks as well. The win on Sunday, coupled with the decent showings through the opening portion of the season, vaulted van Gisbergen inside the top-16 of the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings with just 14 races remaining until the Chase begins.
While he came up more than seven seconds shy of his third-career NASCAR Cup Series win, Michael McDowell, who had suffered from four consecutive bad finishes, was happy to stop the bleeding with a runner-up finish. And at times, he felt he was in the same ballpark as van Gisbergen, although he ultimately feels that was due to van Gisbergen pacing himself at points in the race.
“Yeah, it’s great. It’s great to get this Chevrolet in the top five. There were moments where I thought, oh, maybe we can hang with SVG, and it felt like he was just pacing himself back off me, and he would take back off,” McDowell said.
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Gibbs, who was iffy on making it to the finish of the race on his fuel load, was able to do so, and only faded to third down the long run at the end of the race.
Chase Briscoe was able to claim a solid fourth-place finish, ahead of Tyler Reddick, the series points leader.
Austin Dillon, A.J. Allmendinger, Kyle Busch, Austin Cindric, and John Hunter Nemechek rounded out the top-10 finishers in the Go Bowling at The Glen.
Connor Zilisch, the lone Rookie of the Year contender this year in the Cup Series, found himself near the front of the field all race long, and at a point in the race, was applying pressure to van Gisbergen for the lead. Zilisch, who was on the same strategy as Gibbs, was fighting Gibbs for the race lead, as SVG was bearing down on them.
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Unfortunately, for Zilisch, a flat tire would ruin what had been a great run.
After an unscheduled pit stop, Zilisch was able to rally himself back to a 20th-place finish, but on a day, where he ran inside the top-five all race long, it was a disappointing result.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/onsi/racing-america as Shane Van Gisbergen Makes Flawless Rally To Win Watkins Glen.
