Everyone calm down, it’s not like it hadn’t been done before.
In fact, it was just … let’s see … where’s the stat book?
Here you go, we have it. Oh my, hold on there.
On second thought, some respect for the victor.
Turns out, it had been a whopping nine years — and 322 Cup Series weekends! — since Kyle Busch took a broom to an Indianapolis weekend in the manner Shane van Gisbergen did in Chicago.
Xfinity pole, Xfinity win. Cup pole, Cup win.
In five starts on the streets of Chicago (two Xfinity, three Cup) van Gisbergen has won four times.
Talk about deja vroom!
In the end, the only drama involved a flag. Would the yellow remain holstered until SVG took the white flag, or would it unfurl and force yet another restart in which SVG outmuscled Ty Gibbs through Turn 1?
Cody Ware had a brake issue and ended up tucked deep into a tire barrier in Turn 6, and while Arby’s surely appreciated the sponsor hit when TNT cameras focused on Ware’s Ford, few others were hungry for another restart because it all seemed so inevitable.
Should NASCAR have thrown the caution earlier and gone to overtime. Probably. Would it have changed the outcome? Not out front, most likely.
Let’s get up to speed on all the important stuff. Yes, including the pile of debris we once recognized as brackets.
First Gear: SVG’s Chicago invokes memories of Riverside and a long-ago hero
Bet you didn’t expect a Dan Gurney mention this week.
The 1960s hot-rodding god knew what it was like to hoard trophies at one particular track. Gurney did a modest amount of moonlighting in NASCAR — 16 starts, mostly at Daytona, where he had a few good finishes, and Riverside, where he hogged the spotlight. Gurney won his first four Cup starts at the California road course, starting in 1963, and five of his first six.
Like SVG, Gurney was a road-racing specialist. Unlike SVG, he literally stayed in his lane and never tried tackling the oval-track series beyond a handful of starts at Daytona and Atlanta.
And wouldn’t you know it, van Gisbergen gets another road course this week — Sonoma, which has plenty of right-hand turns but won’t resemble the Chicago Street Course in any other fashion.
The current line of reasoning suggests SVG will be good at Sonoma but not head-and-shoulders above the crowd, like he was at Mexico City last month and Chicago last weekend. The NASCAR veterans are very familiar with Sonoma, which should erase some of the Kiwi’s advantage.
Second Gear: Doing a number on the upcoming NASCAR playoffs
Let’s briefly talk playoffs from two different angles, beginning with Shane van Gisbergen, who has two more chances to build up the reserves during the regular season.
Since he’s still figuring out the ovals, it’s assumed SVG’s playoff lifespan will be a short one, but here’s something to ponder. He has gathered 11 playoff bonus points so far, and only four drivers have more than that. In fact, William Byron leads the points standings and he only has 12.
The Round of 16 in the playoffs includes Darlington, St. Louis and Bristol. Not very appetizing for SVG, but if he adds to his bonus points this week and again at Watkins Glen next month, he could ride that padding to the Round of 12, which includes the Charlotte road course.
And the Round of 8 includes Talladega, where nothing is certain. The playoff odds will be against SVG, but don’t stack them too high.
Also, van Gisbergen’s second win of the year means we’re still at 12 different winners with seven regular-season races remaining, including two road courses and Daytona. We’re unlikely to get to 16 different winners for the first time in the history of the 16-team playoffs, but there’s still a chance.
Check out the list of 2025’s winless drivers, and you’ll know it’s possible.
Third Gear: The Daniel Suarez-Trackhouse divorce everyone saw coming
Well, it certainly wasn’t an ALL CAPS headline.
When Trackhouse Racing went all official with its decision to move on from Daniel Suarez, most plugged-in NASCAR fans likely thought, “Yeah, no kidding.” It has seemed obvious for a while, and not just to us.
“There have been situations in the last eight to 10 months that I didn’t feel like I used to feel with different situations,” Suarez said in the wake of the news that wasn’t really news. “It’s like being in a relationship but just living together because you bought a house together.”
The last 8-10 months? Yikes, that goes back to the closing weeks or months of 2024, a season when he won a race and made it through the first round of the playoffs.
The next non-news news should involve the promotion of Connor Zilisch to that No. 99 Trackhouse Chevy.
Meanwhile, someone around here (ahem) has wondered if the long-simmering Suarez exit had something to do with Pitbull abruptly departing as part-owner of Trackhouse way back in February.
Daytona week at the start of the season is a great time to announce a driver’s contract extension, if one was in the works. The longer we got into the season without a Suarez extension, the more it became clear what was coming.
Best guess for the next Suarez announcement: He will have to decide between an mid-level Cup team and a decent-to-quality Xfinity ride.
Fourth Gear: In-season tourney sputters along
I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume many of you haven’t paid a lot of attention to Wimbledon.
Well, the top seeds in the ladies’ singles draw — damn near all the seeds, actually — have been dismissed quicker than crazies from a jury pool. But even Wimbledon has nothing on NASCAR when it comes to junk-heaping the star power.
NASCAR’s inaugural in-season bracket challenge, which started with 32 drivers aiming for a million-dollar payoff, is now down to eight racers. Not to cast stones, but let’s just say the Boys in Marketing will have to do some heavy lifting to get your buy-in over these next three tourney weeks.
After Chicago, your eight remaining brackiteers: Ty Dillon, Alex Bowman, John Hunter Nemechek, Erik Jones, Ryan Preece, Tyler Reddick, Ty Gibbs and Zane Smith.
Chase Elliott, Brad Keselowski and Bubba Wallace were among those who departed Bracketville after Chicago.
This isn’t to say it’s not a neat little in-season diversion. Just don’t expect it to play out according to conventional wisdom. Then again, neither has the women’s half of Wimbledon, and no, you aren’t like to see “NASCAR” and “Wimbledon” in the same sentence again this week.
— Email Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com
Read the full article here
