Getting your
Trinity Audioplayer ready...SONOMA — Shane van Gisbergen was the best in the Sonoma, and his rivals are calling him one of the “greatest in the world.”
Van Gisbergen dominated, leading 74 of 110 laps on Sunday, but had to battle Chase Briscoe in a last-lap dash to the finish to capture the checkered flag for the second year in a row at the NASCAR Cup Series Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway’s road course.
“I spent the last 40 laps hoping there wouldn’t be a caution,” said SVG, who had to navigate lapped traffic through the challenging 10-turn, 1.99-mile road course as he held off Briscoe.
SVG got clear of some of the slower cars in the passing zones, while Briscoe made a small, but crucial, bobble.
“Last year, I felt like I never really knew what he had,” said Briscoe, who finished second to SVG at Sonoma for the second year in a row. “Today, like 15 or so to go, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s letting me catch him and he’ll just drive away,’ and then I realized I was like, man, I’m actually better here, like I could see him struggling. I could tell the last 10 laps, it was everything he had. I just, I made a mistake with like three or four to go getting into Turn 1.”
Briscoe was conserving his tires with four laps to go when he missed Turn 1, leading the field uphill off the front straightaway. That gave SVG some breathing room, but Briscoe recovered and was on SVG’s bumper coming through the hairpin Turn 11 heading to the checkered flag.
“I just have to be absolutely perfect to beat him, and I wasn’t perfect,” Briscoe said. “I thought I definitely had the superior car. I just didn’t do as good of a job as he did driving.”
The win is van Gisbergen’s seventh on the Cup Series, all coming on road courses. He is tied with Tony Stewart for second-place for the most Cup Series road course wins. Jeff Gordon is the all-time leader with nine.
“I think that Shane is one of the greatest road-course drivers in the world,” Briscoe said. “I felt like I was playing one-on-one against Michael Jordan. I didn’t have the lead, but I had every opportunity to beat him, and I blew it.”
SVG, the winner of three of four races at Sonoma in two years, pitted with 27 laps to go as the field cycled through its final green flag pit strategy. He came back on course in fifth place and quickly worked his way back up to the lead ahead of Briscoe and Connor Zilisch. The road course king from New Zealand led the field all the way to the finish, with a hard-charging Briscoe filling his rear-view mirror.
“I saw the gap eating away and I was (about to mess myself),” SVG said.
Polesitter Ty Gibbs finished third, with 2024 Sonoma winner Kyle Larson fourth and Christopher Bell fifth.
“I have fun at this track,” said Larson, an Elk Grove native. “We raced hard, we just need to work hard and keep improving. SVG won today, but he’s a great road racer. I was trying to do everything I could to close the gap.”
Ryan Blaney finished sixth, ahead of Zilisch, who was challenging for the lead most of the day before falling back late to settle into seventh place for his first career top-10 finish.
Los Gatos native AJ Allmendinger, who was running in the top 10 part of the day despite a rough car, finished 16th.
“On the road courses this season, it seems like no matter what I do, I can’t make the tires last and it hits that cliff,” Allmendinger said. “Once it hits that cliff, I think we fall harder than most.”
SVG, looking for the weekend sweep in Wine Country, stuck to the same successful formula he used to win Saturday’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race. He surrendered a chance at stage wins in favor of track position, pitting before the end of the first two stages. Charging hard in second place with three laps to go in the first stage, SVG came into pit road for a splash of gas. He gave up a dominant 10-second lead in Stage 2 for a pit stop, preparing for a run to the finish.
“It was a pretty amazing. I thought we were a lost cause,” said SVG, who had been complaining about his Red Bull Chevrolet all weekend. “I thought we felt pretty average, but I saw others had similar issues, or worse. My crew made some great calls. They were really cool, especially under pressure. The chase was close at the end when we were running into lapped traffic. I thought we were in a world of hurt.”
The kind of chaos that has been common for NASCAR finishes at Sonoma in the past never materialized, as SVG and Briscoe raced to the finish under green. In fact, there was only one caution flag for an on-track incident during the race.
Tyler Reddick, the NASCAR Cup Series points leader entering the weekend, saw his eight-point advantage vanish in the first lead as Denny Hamlin took control. Hamlin, who had been on a hot run coming into the race, was fast enough to finish 26th Sunday and take over the series lead by just one point. Hamlin was looking for a top-10 finish before he was spun by Carson Hocevar halfway through the race, but was fortunate to avoid major contact.
Reddick, meanwhile, was battling gremlins with a power steering problem that knocked him to the back of the pack early in the race. He found the right gear later in the race for some fast laps, but never dug himself out of his hole, finishing four laps down in last place.
The win gives SVG a 36-point cushion above the cutoff for the 10-race Chase, but the rest of the season is run on ovals.
Gibbs, who won the first two stages of the race and collected 54 points, jumped up a spot to fourth place behind Blaney in the NASCAR standings. The series heads next to Chicagoland Speedway on July 5.