By Adam Carabine
Shane Van Gisbergen, fresh off his first Xfinity win in Portland last weekend, won his second race in a row in Sonoma Saturday from the pole position. On the surface it looks like two weeks of dominance, but it was far from an easy win today for the driver known as SVG.
His pole lap was almost half a second faster than Ty Gibbs’, who started alongside him in the front row driving the 19 car, but the race itself did feature some adversity.
On his qualifying effort, Shane Van Gisbergen said, “Quali was special, starting to understand the tires, how to turn them on. I did that warm up lap slowly, I think we were the only ones to do that, trying to figure out what I need in the car, and what’s going to make it better in qualifying.”
Stage One was the SVG and Ty Gibbs show, as everyone else was at least 9 seconds off the lead. SVG’s team opted to stay out and collect the stage win, as Gibbs pit with two to go.
During the stage break, SVG reported on his radio that something was wrong with the front end of his car.
As a result, Ty Gibbs started Stage Two at the front of the field, while SVG was mired back in P8. In a single lap, he passed three cars and made his way to P5.
At the end of Stage Two, the plan was to flip the stage to get track position, and hit pit road before it closed with 2 to go, but there was some confusion with his team. They expected that leader Ty Gibbs would be doing the same, and had told SVG to follow him into pit road. However, Ty Gibbs and team opted not to pit, and they didn’t have enough time to tell him to pit.
“It was good getting those points, short term gain, but as soon as we drop back into the field, you have to beat your car up a little bit getting through, things get hot, and a lot more stress on it.”
Stage Two was won by Gibbs, with SVG making his way up to P2. The ensuing pit stop proved to be deadly for Gibbs, as he and his team lost 10 spots.
The restart for the final stage was calamitous, as upwards of 15 drivers were involved in a “big one,” at turn 3. Ty Gibbs who was stuck back in traffic took the worst of it, ending his day in a DNF.
On the following restart, Austin Hill led the field to green, and SVG quickly made his way up to P2, setting the stage for a rematch from a COTA incident earlier this season.
Another caution came out with 13 to go, as Jesse Love took a spin off of Turn 10.
As they went back green, SVG bumped Austin Hill out of the way, took the lead, and never looked back. He led the final ten laps of the race, and a dejected Hill finished P5.
After the race, SVG said, “To me, we’ve both taken a race win off of each other now.”
On his less-than-dominant day, Van Gisbergen wasn’t perturbed, adding, “When you get in dirty air, you get the heat soak, the brakes fade a bit, tires get a bit hotter.”
“We still definitely had the fastest car, I believe, but we didn’t have half a second a lap.”
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