This was a Shane van Gisbergen masterclass but not in the traditional sense.
Typically, if crew chief Stephen Doran gets their Trackhouse Racing No. 97 remotely close to what he needs, Van Gisbergen can do the rest and the gap to second is only as close as the three-time Supercars champion wants to make it.
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In the case of Sunday at Sonoma Raceway, the car did not seem particularly close and Van Gisbergen and Doran both needed to make decisions to compensate for that initial deficiency.
Regardless, the result was yet another SVG victory on a Cup Series road course, his second of the season and one that he needed in a lot of ways from a big picture standpoint.
Watch: King of Wine Country! SVG holds off Briscoe to win Sonoma
“I thought we were a lost cause,” said Van Gisbergen after the race. “Yeah, the guys did a great job making setup changes, and as soon as the race started, I still felt average, but I saw other people had similar issues or worse.
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That gave me confidence. Yeah, Stephen made great calls all day. That group did an amazing job with the strategy and where I’d come out. Then even that last stop coming out in front and being able to manage my tires and manage that gap, it was really cool.”
In short: Van Gisbergen didn’t like the speed and longevity of his car. As a result, Doran made several directional changes overnight but also made the decision to emphasize track position over stage points.
Running second to Ty Gibbs approaching the end of the first stage, and then leading near the end of the second stage, Doran flipped those stages, meaning he would give up maximum points but come back out for the start of the next stage as the leader.
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“The strategy was pretty simple today,” Doran said. “We didn’t have the speed in the car to drive our way through the field. So we just chose to flip the stages to maintain track position. I felt like a few of those cars, especially the Gibbs cars, were better than us today.
“I guess luckily for us, they chose to flip — or to take the stage points. We chose to flip the stages. Gave us a buffer to those guys, and we were able to maintain it the rest of the day.”
Shane van Gisbergen, Trackhouse Racing
Shane van Gisbergen, Trackhouse Racing
This was opposite to the strategy of Gibbs and crew chief Tyler Allen, who gave up track position for a combined 20 stage points and fresher tires to start the second and third stage. Van Gisbergen was able to manage the race out front and had just enough to hold off Chase Briscoe over the final laps.
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“A lot of pressure at the end,” Van Gisbergen said. “Chase was really fast. I kind of thought I was good mid-stint when I was going easy and managing to gap him, and then the last ten laps I was really in a world of hurt. So, yeah, it got pretty tense at the end.”
Briscoe got close enough in the final two laps to begin consider using the bumper but Van Gisbergen was too good through the esses and built a gap into Turn 11 each time. SVG even goaded a mistake out of Briscoe, where the JGR driver overshot a corner and gave up a second.
He got it back but then ran out of time.
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“I was pushing hard because I wanted to force him into a mistake,” Briscoe said. “I kind of baited him into one in (Turn) 7 because he kind of missed it. Unfortunately, I just missed with him.
“I thought we were good under braking and I thought we had a better car than him but I didn’t do as good a job driving as he did.”
Which, again, who else in the Cup Series can do the most with the least than SVG on a road course given where Trackhouse’s performance has lacked this season holistically?
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SVG was also banking on Briscoe taking too many ethical liberties either.
“I don’t think he’s that sort of driver but if there was a lap or two more and he would have been closer, I would have been in trouble,” Van Gisbergen said. “Then I would have had to start defending and probably deserved to get moved.
“I’m really thankful it wasn’t one or two laps longer, but he’s a guy I have a lot of respect for, and it seems to come back the other way too. Every time I race him, he’s awesome to race against. Yeah, I knew it would have been a good battle if he did get there.”
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The win proved to be important because SVG is on the cutline to make the Chase for the Championship now that a single win isn’t enough to make ‘The Playoffs’ these days. He got crashed from the lead last week at San Diego and still hasn’t been able to crack Circuit of the Americas yet.
SVG entered this race five points out of The Chase for the Championship and left 36 above it. Doran said they needed these final two road courses of the season to begin but only got one of them.
“Like I told a few people earlier, what we need is better qualifying to be able to start better in some of these races,” Doran said. “We proved that in Nashville and Charlotte. If we can qualify up there, we can stay up there all day. That’s just the last piece of the puzzle with the ovals is to qualify good. Just maintain that all day.
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“So that’s the focus going forward, is to just work on practice qualifying, unloading a little bit closer on the car side and just getting the initial speed in practice to carry over to qualifying, to be able to start up front and stay there all night.”
So now, Van Gisbergen just needs to avoid bad finishes, and DNFs.
“Like some weeks I find we can run 10th to 15th pretty easily, and other weeks it’s a battle to run 30th,” Van Gisbergen said. “Yeah, as a team, we definitely need to be better and prepare as well as we can. Open practice (at Chicagoland) will certainly help us next week. We can try some things.
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“Yeah, I just need to keep getting better and make no mistakes. It would be really cool to point our way in.”
Read Also:
Shane van Gisbergen wins Sonoma NASCAR Cup race, Denny Hamlin takes points lead
Complete NASCAR Cup points standings after Sonoma 2026
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