Shane van Gisbergen insists his NASCAR road-course dominance is harder than it looks, and that he feels "a lot of pressure" to beat the best in stock-car racing.
But the Trackhouse Racing driver was in another league Sunday, schooling the stars of the Cup Series at Watkins Glen International.
Starting from the pole position, van Gisbergen scored his seventh Cup Series victory — all on road or street courses — and his second consecutive on the 3.94km track by leading 74 of 100 laps in his No. 97 Chevrolet.
"We weren't very good in practice, and then qualifying was amazing, and then today, what a race car," van Gisbergen said.
"And then (crew chief) Stephen (Doran) made great calls. I wasn't sure how it was going to work, and then to run them down like that, it's very, very special to do two in a row."
Pitting from the lead under green with 24 laps remaining, van Gisbergen emerged in 24th and was nearly 30 seconds behind leader Ty Gibbs.
Extending his Cup record of wins by a driver born outside the United States, the New Zealand native needed only 17 laps to retake the lead from Gibbs, winning by 7.288 seconds over Michael McDowell.
"He's made it pretty clear, especially at these tracks, he likes to be on offense, so we put him there and just let him go do his thing," Doran said of the call to make a late stop for four tires instead of pitting earlier and conserving fuel as many others did.
Gibbs finished third, followed by Chase Briscoe and points leader Tyler Reddick.
McDowell, who started second, also had to charge through the pack after falling to 27th on his last pit stop. He occasionally thought he could keep pace with the race winner but soon realised van Gisbergen was playing possum.
"It felt like he was just pacing himself off me, and he'd take back off," McDowell said.
"We still got a little work to do, but it's a good building block."
Dating to Mexico City last June, van Gisbergen has now won six of the past seven races on road or street courses in Cup.
"It's not easy," van Gisbergen said.
"Everyone's really good. McDowell was good. Connor (Zilisch) was good. Tyler Reddick. There were some really good guys and a lot of pressure. So just stoked to execute every facet of our game. And speechless. This is so cool."
Trackhouse sweep
The win by van Gisbergen came a day after a win in the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series by rookie teammate Zilisch, who finished 20th Sunday after a tire problem late in the race. It still was a strong showing for Trackhouse, which qualified all three of its cars in the top five after compiling only four top-10 finishes in the first 11 races.
"Just frustrating because we had a really good day going," Zilisch said.
"At worst, we were going to get ourselves our first top five and walk out of here with something. But congrats to Shane, Trackhouse and everybody who makes this happen."
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