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.
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.
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