SVG Goes Back-To-Back at Sonoma

Shane van Gisbergen, the Supercar star from New Zealand, has been one of the biggest stories going around in NASCAR currently. Since his win at Chicago last year, he’s been running full-time in the NASCAR Xfinity Series and has shown a lot of promise. Last week at Portland, he played to his strengths to earn his first career NASCAR Xfinity Series victory. This would also lead to what has been hyped up as his new celebration. With his Trackhouse teammates, Ross Chastain has the Watermelon, Daniel Suarez has the pinata, so what about SVG?

A Rugby Ball. He would first drift around the circuit, then sign a rugby ball and kick it into the crowd. New Zealand is considered the best rugby nation in the world. 

We got to witness that again just a week later at Sonoma, where SVG by far had the fastest car. He started from the pole and led a race high of 32 laps while making a late pass on Austin Hill after a tough side-by-side battle. They made contact with each other, costing Hill four positions. This comes after they had a similar battle at Circuit of the Americas where Kyle Larson would pass both drivers to win that race. 

“Man, what a race — an adventure up and down and up and down all day,” said van Gisbergen after the race. He also, like at Portland, kicked a rugby ball into the crowd. It was noted in the FOX broadcast that he played rugby as a kid. 

“But that last restart I was just giving it all I had and two guys going for the same real estate came together.”

“It was pretty awesome though, a lot of fun. Hope everyone enjoyed the show. Pretty awesome back-to-back weeks for us.”

With two wins in his back pocket, it will surely lock him into the 2024 NASCAR Xfinity Series playoffs. 

As for Austin Hill, he wasn’t too pleased about the late race contact battling for the win. However, he insisted that he would take the “high road.”

“I’m gonna leave it to the keyboard warriors on this one, I’ll let them figure out what happened,” said Hill after the race. “No matter what comment I say, it’ll be wrong.”

“I plead the fifth, I’m not going to say anything about it,” he continued. “We’ll just go on to the next one, good hard racing. We were holding off SVG for a while, had that caution and I knew it was going to be tough on the restart and it didn’t work out. But we had a good points day and finished in the top five. You can’t ask for more than that.”

Sheldon Creed, still in search of his first career Xfinity Series win, finished in second, with Sam Mayer in third. 23-year-old Austin Green, the son of former NASCAR driver David Green, continues to impress in the No. 32 for Jordan Anderson Racing, as he placed a fourth place finish. Austin Hill would finish fifth. John Hunter Nemechek, Justin Allgaier, Chandler Smith, Cole Custer, and Parker Kligerman completed the top ten. 

Ty Gibbs looked to be the biggest challenger to SVG and led for 26 laps. However, he had a slow pit stop before the stage two restart and was collected in a 13-car pileup shortly after that restart. 

“It was awesome racing Ty Gibbs at the start, we were really pushing each other. It’s special to win two road courses in a row and dream about one day winning on an oval.”

This marked the final NASCAR Xfinity Series race on FOX under the current media, as NBC will take over and then will move over to the CW for the playoffs beginning fully in 2025.

The Xfinity Series make a return to Iowa Speedway in part of its inaugural NASCAR Cup Series weekend, which will take place Saturday at 3:30 pm for the HyVee Perks 250. Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe each won a race at Iowa in the 2019 season — the last time the series visited the 0.875-mile track.