Connor Zilisch holds off Shane Van Gisbergen’s late charge to win third race of season in PitBoss/FoodMaxx 250 at Sonoma Raceway

By Kyle Foster, the photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (Shamboozled.com)

kfost91197@gmail.com

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SONOMA-Being the class of the field doesn’t always lead to success. But when you’re by far and away the best, it could be a boring finish, 

However, in Saturday’s Pit Boss/FoodMaxx 250 at Sonoma Raceway, it came down to Trackhouse Racing and JR Motorsports teammates with two to go, which saw Connor Zilisch edge Shane Van Gisbergen in NASCAR Xfinity Series action. 

With two laps to go, Van Gisbergen cut the deficit to just a few car lengths and had a chance to pass Zilisch in turn 11, but was unable to make the pass. This gave Zilisch all the room he needed to hold onto the win.

“He shoved me into four, I think it was, and then got close to me in seven, and I went to block, and we were all the way down at the bottom had no angle,” Zilisch explained of the late race battle for the win. “I don’t think I really will hop too bad, but I definitely was overdriving the corner, and had to do that to keep him behind me.” 

But throughout the day, the two swapped the lead and fastest laps. Zilisch was better on the downhill portion of the course. 

“The second one, I was leading, and we kept the lead, and was able to keep the lead,” Zilisch said. “ But the first pit stop, yeah, my pit crew did an awesome job to get me the lead, and that kind of got us a little bit of space in stage two.”

Zlisch also led a race-high 46 laps during the four times he was at the point of the race. He started the race from second, which gave him some great track position. 

The win comes after finishing second in last week’s race through the streets of Chicago to Van Gisbergen. 

This was Zilisch’s 4th win in the series in just 22 starts. This is the third victory of his career on road courses. He won at Circuit of the Americas in March and then again at Pocono earlier in the campaign. As the season has gone on, he has been solid at nearly every track. 

The main reason why Van Gisbergen was able to keep the race interesting at the end was the fact that his car was strong over the course of a long green flag run. 

“My car was really good on the long run, especially in that last stage, and just got better and better, and really fun race,” Van Gisbergen explained. 

Van Gisbergen also had an opportunity to run through and clean out his teammate on the final lap, but decided against it. 

“In this type of racing, like it ran through my head into 11 on the last lap,” he added. “Like you’re allowed to just run through people and bumping wide, but I’m not going to do that. So tried to do a crossover, and just didn’t have the grip out there.”

The top two were so good throughout the day that the third-place finisher, William Sawalich, was 13 seconds behind. Others rounding out the top 5 in the race were Nick Sanchez and Riley Herbst. 

Making his first career start at his home track was Clovis’s Corey Day. He had a solid day going before getting wrecked out at the end of the race to finish in the 24th position. 

Justin Allgaier finished 6th in the race and still holds the points lead heading into next week’s race at Dover Motor Speedway.