Shane Van Gisbergen joins three win NASCAR club at Sonoma

This is becoming old hat as a classic idiom would articulate it.

Shane Van Gisbergen has won three consecutive road or street course races in the NASCAR Cup Series and is now amongst the elite when it comes to all the statistics that matter the most these days.

His three victories tie Kyle Larson, Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell for the most in the division. Of course, they are all within the top six of the overall championship standings while ‘SVG’ is up to 27th.

But Trackhouse Racing is capitalizing on the system thanks to a driver with an elite road racing skillset with a type of car he has driven for well over a decade. As a result, Van Gisbergen has accumulated the third most number of playoff points through this point of the season.

Now, to be fair, those in the top-10 of the final regular season championship standings are going to be rewarded for their consistency with additional playoff points, but ‘SVG’ is getting to the point where he is accumulating enough of a buffer that he could survive the first round, making it to the second round that contains the Charlotte Roval, and a third round which has Talladega.

And oh, by the way, there is still one more road course race remaining in the regular season at Watkins Glen, giving Van Gisbergen an outside shot at a five-win rookie campaign.

Yes, these are all on road courses, but Van Gisbergen is the absolute best at this discipline right now and is carrying Stephen Doran and the No. 88 team to where they are right now.

“Most of it is Shane,” said Doran himself after the race. “We did get the car better. He was not happy with it in practice. We made a bunch of changes for today. Made the right changes, and he was pretty happy with it today and he was able to control the race, save his tires, kind of just manage his gap and use them at the end when he needed them.”

The right changes?

“There might be, but I’m not going to tell you that,” Doran said coyly.

However, it’s worth noting that Van Gisbergen did not ask for a single adjustment all race. Whatever changes Doran ordered overnight, they were enough for his driver to do the rest on Sunday in Sonoma.

By his own words, Van Gisbergen is under ‘no illusion’ that he is ready to start challenging for wins on ovals but it’s also true that his good days have gone from 30th to 25th and now 20th over the first six months of the season.

And through all the developmental challenges, ‘SVG’ delivered on his bread and butter tracks, giving him all the more room to develop appropriately.

“We were coming 50th it felt like,” Van Gisbergen said of his early oval performances. “But it wasn’t completely the end of the world. I felt like I was getting better as a driver, getting closer to my teammates and starting to match what they were doing. You could just feel that we were better than what we were. It just had to sort of click.

“The last month and a half, two months, we’ve really started getting better, the 88 car, and then also the team, as well, we’ve started getting better and better. It’s four wins for us now as a team, and it’s been an amazing turnaround for everyone.”

 Again, no illusion, but he wants to keep developing the next two weeks at Dover and Indianapolis.

“I’d like to keep that progression going and keep starting to build towards the mid field and then the top half of it.”

Multiple chances

First, a caution with 15 to go for a loose Cody Ware wheel set up a late restart but then ensuing cautions that gave Chase Briscoe and others multiple chances to get Van Gisbergen.

While he’s had few issues in recent years, Gibbs’ move being called into question was aided by a history of showing frustration on pit road. He rammed into Sam Mayer repeatedly on the cooldown lap and brawled with the then-JR Motorsports driver after late contact in a 2022 Xfinity Series race at Martinsville Speedway. Gibbs was also fined $75,000 and docked 25 points for door-slamming Ty Dillon on pit road during a 2023 Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway.

For Briscoe, even finishing second was a moral victory as Sonoma is far from his favorite tracks to go to at the highest level, and took the result.

“This is by far my worst race track, so to run second to him, it definitely means a lot, so proud of the day,” Briscoe said.

Briscoe added that he felt he would finish second had the race stayed green so avoiding any chaos over the final two restarts was a relief.

“We were faced with the split decision to pit or not pit and then we stayed out,” Briscoe said. “That could go a lot of different ways. I just tried my best. Even if I got the lead, there would be like a 10 percent chance I could even hold it.

“So really, I just wanted to get behind him and try to hold off those guys in the second and third row. I was able to stay tight enough to him and it was a good day.”

Van Gisbergen trusted Briscoe to race him respectfully and the only concern he had was firing off due to the tire marbles that littered the frontstretch.

“This soft tire leaves so many marbles around the track, and you’re trying to be respectful when you line up two wide, but you end up pushing each other into the marbles, even though you’re not trying to,” Van Gisbergen said. “Then we both take off and you could hear the marbles flicking up on the guards and stuff. It was really slippery.

“But you just know all those people up at the front there, it was (Briscoe), (Byron), (Bell) I think we were mainly racing, and they’re great guys to race. I always race well with them and enjoy racing them. I knew Chase wasn’t going to do anything stupid, but he got really close at Turn 2 a couple of times, and he had a proper crack. It was cool racing.”

Briscoe hopes this earned him some street cred.

“I feel like I get overlooked a lot of the time,” Briscoe said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to earn the respect of a lot of guys — not even all the drivers, but I think just everybody. I always felt like I was capable of doing it and the 19 car finally lets me show what I feel like I’m capable of. It’s just so fun to drive fast race cars.”

For a million

Kaulig Racing

Ty Dillon survived the drafting track race at Atlanta Motor Speedway and has continued his ‘Cinderella Run’ in the NASCAR In-Season Tournament ever since.

On Sunday, No. 32 seeded Ty Dillon advanced with a bump-and-run past No. 8 Alex Bowman to advance into the semi-finals next Sunday at Dover.

A bold move to make the semifinals! @tydillon moves @Alex_Bowman to advance in the In-Season Challenge! pic.twitter.com/qdylBL60RS

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) July 13, 2025

He previously advanced over No. 1 Denny Hamlin and No. 17 Brad Keselowski. The pass was for 17th on the running order but if he can find someway to pull this off at Dover and Indianapolis, this is for a million dollars.

There wasn’t bad blood afterwards either.

100% friendly and good fun!

Brutal handshake though… tough to watch. 😂 https://t.co/HGkZg2RBxb pic.twitter.com/YrEP8Y1w1e

— Kaulig Racing (@KauligRacing) July 13, 2025

In other In Season Challenge news, No. 12 John Hunter Nemechek advanced over No. 20 Erik Jones. No. 23 Tyler Reddick advanced over No. 15 Ryan Preece. No. 6 Ty Gibbs advanced over No. 14 Zane Smith.

Pit crews scuffle

In the laps leading up to the second stage break, a physical scuffle broke out between the pit crews working for Ty Gibbs and Brad Keselowski.

Gibbs, driving his Joe Gibbs Racing No. 54, drove in awfully close to the front tire changer for the RFK Racing No. 6 and the two crews needed to be pulled apart immediately after both teams completed their stops.

An incident on the track and a separate one on pit road.@SteveLetarte and the TNT crew take a closer look. pic.twitter.com/lyWsYKExfW

— NASCAR (@NASCAR) July 13, 2025

RFK Racing shared an overhead view to illustrate their frustrations.

You be the judge 👨🏻‍⚖️ pic.twitter.com/JYiUYvRp9e

— RFK Racing (@RFKracing) July 13, 2025

Per the NASCAR rule book, Gibbs was in compliance with pit entry regulations and expressed as much after the race and his seventh-place run.

“Yeah, you know, by NASCAR’s rules, I’m the lead car because I’m the pit box pass where the 6 is, and I’m in front of him as well,” Gibbs said. “We have these orange lines right there as you can see. … Where if I’m behind him, I have to go around those orange lines for it to be a rule, and going in, I have the right of way.

“So, you know, they’re on the wall for a reason, they jump for a reason, they kind of get out of the way. And those guys like to push it, and that’s kind of the consequence you pay. So, that’s unfortunate for them that they had a penalty. Nothing malicious, it’s my right of way. So.”

Gibbs was under additional scrutiny because he has a past history of dubious behavior on pit road. He was fined $75,000 and issued a 25 point penalty in 2023 for door slamming Ty Dillon pit road during a 2023 Cup Series race at Texas Motor Speedway.

Results

Playoff update

At this point, there are a lot of playoff hopes resting on the regular season finale at Daytona, a race anyone can win from anywhere in the standings like Harrison Burton did last summer.

Bubba Wallace retained his three point lead over Ryan Preece but Kyle Busch made great gains on both of them but still finds a deep point deficit to overcome. And again, a new winner from the back half of the standings would ruin all three of their playoff hopes.

Updated provisional standings

Denny Hamlin WWW
Christopher Bell WWW
Kyle Larson WWW
Shane Van Gisbergen WWW
William Byron W
Chase Elliott W
Ryan Blaney W
Chase Briscoe W
Ross Chastain W
Joey Logano W
Austin Cindric W
Josh Berry W
Tyler Reddick +149
Chris Buescher +34
Alex Bowman +32
Bubba Wallace +3
Ryan Preece -3
Kyle Busch -37
AJ Allmendinger -50
Ty Gibbs -60
Erik Jones -68
Michael McDowell -70
John Hunter Nemechek -85
Ricky Stenhouse Jr. -91
Carson Hocevar -96
Zane Smith -96
Brad Keselowski -136
Austin Dillon -138
Daniel Suarez -139
Todd Gilliland -150
Ty Dillon -151
Justin Haley -155

Regular season battle 

Remember that the top-10 of the regular season standings also earn playoff points to the tune of 15, 10, 9, 8, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1.

To put it plainly, the regular season champion earns the equivalent of three additional wins as it pertains to playoff seeding in each round. Second is the equivalent of two wins and so forth. 

So while it pays to win races, consistency is also rewarded.

William Byron Ldr
Chase Elliott -14
Kyle Larson -44
Tyler Reddick -53
Denny Hamlin -62
Christopher Bell -71