Shane van Gisbergen is NASCAR’s
leading active winner on road and street courses with Sonoma victory
[June 29, 2026]
SONOMA, Calif. (AP) — 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.
“Not very many people get that close to him at the end of one of
these road course races,” Briscoe said. “Just frustrated with
myself. I felt like I definitely had the better car. I didn’t do as
good of a job as he did driving. I was having to push so hard, and
that was where I would make up my ground. It was just such a razor’s
edge, and I about crashed. If I don’t make that mistake, I’m
probably ahead of him at the end.
“Just bummed that it was my fault we didn’t win with the best car.
Against that guy, you've got to be absolutely perfect.”
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.
With his second win this season, van Gisbergen improved three spots
to 14th in the points standings, moving back into a provisional spot
in the Chase.
But there are no road or street courses remaining over the final 18
races of the season, so the New Zealand native will need to
diversify his skillset after entering NASCAR three years ago with no
experience on ovals.
“I need to really step it up on the ovals,” he said. “This is an
oval championship, and I need to keep getting better at them.”
Pole-sitter Ty Gibbs finished third, and Kyle Larson and Christopher
Bell rounded out the top five.
In-Season Challenge upset
For the second year in a row, the top seed was knocked off in the
opening race of the In-Season Challenge, the bracket-style
tournament that pits 32 drivers head to head with the top finisher
advancing.
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Shane van Gisbergen celebrates after winning a NASCAR Cup Series
auto race at Sonoma Raceway, Sunday, June 28, 2026, in Sonoma,
Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Tyler Reddick finished four laps down in 36th
because of a power steering problem. That turned his first-round
matchup into a walkover for 10th-place finisher Alex Bowman, who
nabbed the 32nd and final seed in the In-Season Challenge despite
missing four races with vertigo.
“It’s just a very odd issue,” Reddick said. “Everything seemed fine
when we left the pit stall, and then the steering just really got
notchy with the power steering going in and out. It was just really
really hard to make any kind of lap time with it.”
The 23XI Racing driver salvaged a point by setting the race’s
fastest lap after the team made repairs. After leading the Chase
standings since winning the Daytona 500 season opener, Reddick fell
one point behind Denny Hamlin with eight races remaining in the
regular season.
“I’d say we got pretty fortunate,” Reddick said. “All things
considered, for the issues that we had, we were very fortunate to
only lose nine points to Denny while finishing last.”
Hamlin vs. Dillon
Second-seeded Hamlin advanced despite a 26th-place finish, avenging
a first-round upset by Ty Dillon last year.
In a rematch, Dillon was ahead of Hamlin for most of Sunday’s race
until he lost power steering with 15 laps remaining and fell to
35th. Hamlin rebounded from being spun from seventh by Carson
Hocevar on a restart with 46 laps remaining.
“I had a really fast car, a top-five car on speed,” Hamlin said.
“Once we got spun, it just lost all the downforce, and we
struggled.”
Hocevar, who was also involved in a separate incident with Bell,
apologized for the contact with Hamlin.
“I was watching my mirror the whole time, and I wasn’t even seeing
that I was hitting Denny,” said Hocevar, who has tangled with
several veterans this year. “I was happy to hear that I wasn’t the
difference maker of Ty beating Denny because I would be looked at
for sports fixing probably with the way I was singing Ty’s praises.”
Up next
NASCAR will return to Chicagoland Speedway for the first time in
seven years with a 400-mile race on July 5. In the most recent Cup
race on the 1.5-mile oval in Joliet, Illinois, Alex Bowman earned
his first victory in NASCAR’s premier series by beating future
teammate Kyle Larson on June 30, 2019.
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