Watkins Glen International (Watkins Glen, N.Y.) — Shane van Gisbergen appeared to not have the winning strategy Sunday at Watkins Glen International … until the winning strategy was to have Shane van Gisbergen behind the wheel.
Not pitting when most of the field did with 39 laps to go (SVG’s team figured he’d be three laps short on fuel) required him to pit under green and come out about 29 seconds behind leader Ty Gibbs with 25 laps remaining.
No problem for van Gisbergen, who took the lead with eight laps to go and won by seven seconds over Michael McDowell, who actually employed a similar strategy. In his final 25 laps, van Gisbergen was 45 seconds overall faster than Gibbs.
“We have a race car driver that … is at a level that I don’t think this sport has ever seen before on these road courses,” team owner Justin Marks said in his post-race news conference.
Here are my takeaways:
1. SVG’s Awesome Rally
At first, the rally appeared to be harder than it would end up being. But he started taking huge chunks out of the lead by Gibbs, who was on older tires and saving fuel.
“That’s the best feeling you can get when you have a tire advantage and an awesome car,” van Gisbergen said in his post-race news conference. “I was just carving everyone up. Some people were nice and laying over, which is cool. The people that didn’t, you had to put good moves on.
“That was the most fun.”
The win marked the seventh for SVG, the three-time Australian Supercars champion who won his first Cup race in 2023 on the Chicago street course.
2. Trackhouse Wins Amid Struggles
The victory for Trackhouse Racing was much needed, considering the team’s struggles this season.
The victory just lifted van Gisbergen above the Chase cutline, as he is 16th in the standings. His teammates are still well below; Ross Chastain is at 19th and Connor Zilisch sits at 32nd.
“Frankly, the way that we started this season, it’s unacceptable to us,” Marks said. “It’s not up to the standards that we set for ourselves. … [This is] like putting a little air in the room for us while we kind of work through engineering the resurgence of our team.”
3. Zilisch Disappointed
Zilisch was running second to Gibbs on the strategy of pitting with 39 laps to go and then needing to save fuel. It didn’t work. He ended up getting a flat tire, having to pit and finished 20th.
He left frustrated and disappointed. He felt he should have just passed Gibbs instead of trying to save gas behind him. He felt that, in clean air, he could have run faster, as well as saved more fuel (and then the question would have been whether he would have gotten a flat).
“I don’t think I could beat Shane, but it’s just frustrating,” the Cup rookie told me and other reporters after the race. “When you’re so close. It sucks.”
4. Who Can Beat SVG?
McDowell would raise his hand, considering he finished in second using a similar strategy to van Gisbergen.
“[The gap] looks bigger than it is,” McDowell told me and other reporters after the race. “It’s probably a 10th of a second a lap. Not much. … Tires were worth a lot today.”
Ty Gibbs and Tyler Reddick also would be ones to believe they can challenge. Reddick won the first road-course race of the season at Circuit of the Americas and finished fifth Sunday. And Chris Buescher, who out dueled van Gisbergen at Watkins Glen in 2024, settled for 12th this year.
4 ½. What’s Next
The NASCAR All-Star Race heads to Dover Motor Speedway, which is playing host to the exhibition event for the first time.
It will be a little different than past All-Star events, which had an open race for nonqualified drivers to make the main event.
Instead, the entire field will compete in two 75-lap segments, with the average finish determining six spots for drivers who have not won races in 2025-26 or have not won Cup titles. There will also be a spot for a driver to get in through the fan vote for the final 200-lap segment, which will consist of 26 cars.
