Despite being dominant all weekend, van Gisbergen uses late race restart to win Zip Buy Now, Pay Later 250
By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Juanbaldo Gomez (JBFilmz)
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Sonoma-To say Shane van Gisbergen is on a roll would be an understatement. He also is a part owner of the West Coast now.
In Saturday night’s Zip Buy Now, Pay Later 250 at Sonoma Raceway, the 35-year-old NASCAR Xfinity Series rookie put on a clinic. From the time the weekend started with practice to qualifying, he was the class of the field and won the race from the pole while leading 32 laps on the way to his second victory in 14 starts.
With the win, the Kaulig Racing driver goes back-to-back on the West Coast summer swing. After all, he won at Portland. In both instances, it was his first time seeing those road courses after winning the inaugural Chicago Street Race in the Cup Series last year.
Van Gisbergen had to earn this win in the latter stages. In the final restart of the race, where he blocked Austin Hill up into the dirt in turn 3. Because of the contact, Hill lost a bunch of spots before finishing 5th in the race.
“Even though we were the fastest car, it’s still never easy here,” the pole sitter said of his day. “And every race I’ve been in is an adventure and NASCAR like your back-and-forth throughout the field.”
This was yet another opportunity to win on a road course, which is something he has yet to do in his time in the Xfinity Series.
“I guess the biggest thing I can take away is we can definitely win on road courses,” Hill explained of the donut in the win column on road courses.”Had a really good car all day and got once I got the lead, got clean air my car was really fast.”
This was another incident for SVG and Hill after they got physical at the first road course of the season at Circuit of the Americas where they both ended up losing the race. They have each cost each other the win.
“I hate ricing and thinking like that,” van Gisbergan added. “But to me, you know we’re both taking the race one off each other now.”
However, this win was a bit more different because van Gisbergen due to the fact that he had some voltage issues in the race, But after switching everything, he was able to hold onto the win.
“So the voltage was my fault,” he explained. “We had sort of eight switches in a row with the brake fans and stuff. And I’ve just flicked them all up and the eight switch is the alternator. So that was my fault thinking they all had to be up.”
With this win, van Gisbergen is very safe as far as the playoffs go. He is now tied for the 4th-winningest foreign-born NASCAR driver as well.
Finishing second was Sheldon Creed. This was his ninth second-place finish without picking up the win.
Rounding out the top five finishers were Sam Mayer who won the ARCA West race on Friday, and Austin Green who finished fourth for Jordan Anderson Racing.
There was also a massive 11-car parking lot-like pile-up to begin the final stage at lap 49. The only other caution for a cause came when Jesse Love wrecked in turn 10.
Cole Custer maintained the overall points lead following the race. Despite being the defending series champion, he has yet to win this season.
This was the final race for NASCAR on Fox with the Xfinity Series after a 10-year run. The series will shift to The CW next year and NBC Sports next week at Iowa Speedway.
