Shane van Gisbergen took his first win at the Circuit of the Americas this morning, leading 31 laps of today’s NASCAR O’Reillys Auto Parts Series race to take a hard-fought victory.
In qualifying, he was beaten to pole position by JR Motorsports teammate Connor Zilisch, which meant he would start the race on the outside heading into turn one. Van Gisbergen committed to the outside line, where he worked his way past Zilisch coming out of turn one and was clear in the lead by turn two. Zilisch dropped back to third as Austin Hill managed to get past him. However, it did not take long for Zilisch to get back in front of Hill and was soon side by side with van Gisbergen towards the end of the first lap.
By lap three, van Gisbergen had a half-second lead over Zilisch and led by a second over Hill. By lap five, both van Gisbergen and Zilisch had put almost four seconds between them and Hill. van Gisbergen had no time to rest, however, with Zilisch looking fast behind and putting the Kiwi under pressure. Zilisch would get past on lap seven and would put a second on van Gisbergen by lap ten.
Although trailing Zilisch, van Gisbergen quickly reminded him why he is a force to be reckoned with, taking his chances into turn six, and catching Zilisch napping to make a bold move and take the lead once more. With two laps to go before the end of stage one, both van Gisbergen and Zilisch headed into the pit lane, where they would emerge in tenth and eleventh, where they finished the stage.
At the start of the second stage, Zilisch reported to his team over the radio that his brake pedal was causing him grief and he felt his pedal had gone ‘long’ and the car was pulling right.
On the restart for the second stage, drivers went four wide into the first turn, where Zilisch, van Gisbergen, and 17-year-old Brent Crews all went off track and almost made contact while jostling for position. On lap 25, fellow JR Motorsports driver Sammy Smith held the lead over Zilisch and van Gisbergen in second and third. Zilisch’s issues with his brakes began to hinder his progress, and he soon fell back through the pack, back in fifth by lap 28. On lap 30, van Gisbergen took the lead once more and quickly put breathing space between the cars behind.
The first incident induced caution came on lap 34, as Baltazar Leguizamon found the turn one tyre barrier heavily with what looked like a failure of some sort. He was luckily able to get out of the car by himself and gave a thumbs up to the stands. Most of the field came into the pit lane on lap 36 when van Gisbergen reported back to his team, he was happy with the race car, and no changes were required.
Zilisch ended up coming into the pit lane on lap 43 to perform a rear brake caliper change, a rare occurrence in the O’Reilly series. This would send him to the rear of the field by the time the change was finished.
At the end of stage 2, van Gisbergen sat in fifth, with Ross Chastain and Zilich sitting in ninth and twenty-ninth, respectively.
van Gisbergen started the final stage in third and made a phenomenal three-wide move through turn 18, where he snuck past Sam Meyer and Jesse Love to take the lead once again. With ten laps remaining, van Gisbergen held the lead by over a second and a half from Love. This lead quickly evaporated as a caution was thrown for a stranded Sage Karam, with a suspected suspension failure forcing him to park his car off turn 19. With this, van Gisbergen led most of the field into the pit lane for a quick tyre change and a dash of fuel.
When racing resumed, van Gisbergen sat in sixth. However, doing what he does best, van Gisbergen made a beautiful move into turn one to slow the car up early and get it pointed around the apex quickly. At the same time, other drivers ran wide, which opened the door for him to take the lead into turn two. From here, there was no turning back for the Kiwi as he drove away to take his first victory around the Circuit of the Americas, and for his fifth road course win on this tier of NASCAR racing.
After driving back through the field after a brake caliper change, Zilich had made his way into the top five to be turned by another driver on track. He eventually finished in 21st place.
SVG will take to the track again tomorrow (2nd March) at 9:30 am NZST as he goes for a clean sweep of the weekend, starting the NASCAR Cup Series race in thirteenth place.
Header Image: JR Motorsports
