MEXICO CITY — Turns out NASCAR’s grand venture into Mexico wasn’t the only international jolt to the Cup Series status quo.
New Zealander Shane van Gisbergen, powering through a stomach ailment that forced him to seek pre-race medical treatment, produced a season-saving victory Sunday at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez that virtually sewed up a berth in the Cup Series Playoffs. His triumph in the Viva Mexico 250 came with dominant style, by 16.567 seconds over runner-up Christopher Bell in the largest Cup Series margin of victory in nearly 16 years.
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Van Gisbergen entered Sunday’s race ranked 33rd in Cup Series points, fourth from the bottom among full-time drivers. His only other top-10 to date has been a sixth place at Circuit of The Americas, the only other road course on the schedule so far. But SVG also has eyes on improvement in his first full Cup season, making methodical gains in his transition to oval-style racing.
In the meantime, he’s making the most of his exceptional road-racing talent, a prime reason why Trackhouse founder Justin Marks brought him to the United States. The plans ahead include getting his game playoff-ready and sharing Sunday’s spoils with his team behind the scenes after his stateside return.
“That’s why I’m here, to win road races. But I’m not here to run last on the ovals either,” said van Gisbergen, who started from the pole after ruling Saturday’s qualifying. “I need to keep getting better to justify being a Cup Series driver. I need to be performing on the ovals, too. I feel like we’re really making strides, but yeah, this is what I’m here to do, make the playoffs, put another Trackhouse car in the playoffs, and yeah, can’t wait to do the victory lunch during the week at Trackhouse and just see how stoked everyone is there. You see the effort everyone puts in, and they don’t get the glory. They’re just stuck at the shop. I love taking that and sharing that moment with them during the week.”
The postseason field has now swelled to 10 drivers for the 16 available spots, with 10 races remaining in the Cup Series regular season. Van Gisbergen joins teammate Ross Chastain, the Coca-Cola 600 winner, in that group, with fellow Trackhouse driver Daniel Suárez — this weekend’s homegrown hero — ranked 29th on the playoff leaderboard and likely needing a win as his path to the postseason.
Van Gisbergen had competed in two partial Cup Series schedules before this year’s Sunoco Rookie of the Year campaign. He most famously burst onto the Cup radar with a stunning victory with Trackhouse in the first Chicago Street Race, and Marks snapped him up to place him on a NASCAR trajectory.
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His move from the Aussie-based Supercars Championship series to the ovals of NASCAR has been challenging, and he’s still visiting some of the venues on the schedule for the first time. Case in point: Next weekend’s trip to Pocono Raceway will be an SVG debut there. No matter how tricky that triangle proves to be, van Gisbergen has another inaugural race win in the bank, plus a playoff future to focus on in the coming weeks.
“We knew it would be tough,” said Stephen Doran, crew chief for SVG’s No. 88 Chevrolet. “He’s going to a lot of these places for the first time in a Cup car just figuring out how to race ovals with this type of car. So we knew it would be a struggle. It’s still going through it, but it’s a huge relief to get this. I think it’s just a momentum builder. We’ve been better on the ovals for the past month, and I think we’ll keep building on that and get ready for the playoffs now.”
Other drivers left Mexico with their playoff fates shaken, either by the impact of SVG’s win or the trouble they found in changing conditions along the 2.42-mile circuit. Kyle Busch had entered the race tied on the provisional elimination line, but his early exit after a crash in the rain-soaked Turn 1 dropped him to 50 points below the bubble — a three-spot drop. Carson Hocevar also fell flat with what he termed as a “sloppy” performance, knocking him from minus-18 on the bubble’s fringes to minus-60 and angering rival Ricky Stenhouse Jr. after an uneven 34th-place day.
Sunday’s results for van Gisbergen weren’t upsetting, but his physical condition was. He said he’d used an abundance of caution in what he ate or drank on this international trip, but his race-day illness left him ailing, forcing him to miss out on some of the pre-race pomp.
He was present for all of the post-race fanfare, saying he planned to keep his celebration going: “I’m going to mix some Red Bulls with some adult beverages.” A playoff clincher and a new outlook for his season likely helped make that mix even sweeter.
“Yeah,” SVG said, “it means everything to us.”
PLAYOFF BUBBLE AT A GLANCE:
Rank | Driver | Cutoff |
---|---|---|
13 | Bubba Wallace | +57 |
14 | Chase Briscoe | +39 |
15 | Alex Bowman | +22 |
16 | Chris Buescher | +19 |
ELIMINATION LINE | ||
17 | Ryan Preece | -19 |
18 | Michael McDowell | -43 |
19 | AJ Allmendinger | -45 |
20 | Kyle Busch | -50 |