Shane van Gisbergen continued his remarkable run on the twistiest tracks in NASCAR, but this was no easy Sunday drive.
The Trackhouse Racing driver became the winningest active Cup Series driver on road and street courses with his second consecutive victory at Sonoma Raceway. Though he led 74 of the final 83 laps after starting sixth on the 1.99-mile road course north of San Francisco, van Gisbergen had to fend off a charge by runner-up Chase Briscoe with a No. 97 Chevrolet that hadn't been entirely to his liking since practice a day earlier.
"We were really bad yesterday, and these guys did an amazing job turning this car into a winner," said van Gisbergen, who celebrated with a massive burnout for the grandstands. "[Briscoe] was coming. He was really, really good, and I ran out at the end. Yeah, a couple more laps, we would have had some problems."
Finishing second to van Gisbergen at Sonoma for the second consecutive year, Briscoe came up 0.357 seconds short and was left lamenting a mistake in getting his No. 19 Toyota into Turn 1 with four laps remaining.
"Not very many people get that close to him at the end of one of these road course races," Briscoe said. "Just frustrated with myself. I felt like I definitely had the better car. I didn’t do as good of a job as he did driving. I was having to push so hard, and that was where I would make up my ground. It was just such a razor's edge, and I about crashed. If I don't make that mistake, I'm probably ahead of him at the end.
"Just bummed that it was my fault we didn’t win with the best car. Against that guy, you've got to be absolutely perfect."
Van Gisbergen notched the eighth victory of his career on the tracks that require left and right turns, breaking a tie with 2020 Cup champion Chase Elliott.
With his second win this season, van Gisbergen improved three spots to 14th in the points standings, moving back into a provisional spot in the Chase.
But there are no road or street courses remaining over the final 18 races of the season, so the New Zealand native will need to diversify his skillset after entering NASCAR three years ago with no experience on ovals.
"I need to really step it up on the ovals," he said. "This is an oval championship, and I need to keep getting better at them."
Pole-sitter Ty Gibbs finished third, and Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell rounded out the top five.
Up next
NASCAR will return to Chicagoland Speedway for the first time in seven years with a 400-mile race on July 5. In the most recent Cup race on the 1.5-mile oval in Joliet, Illinois, Alex Bowman earned his first victory in NASCAR’s premier series by beating future teammate Kyle Larson on June 30, 2019.
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