Update: Friesen has been released from the hospital and returned home after successful multihour surgery July 31 in New York to address his injured pelvis and compound leg fracture and is scheduled to meet with a physical therapist soon, announced on social media Wednesday evening.
NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series driver Stewart Friesen was injured in a heavy dirt modified racing crash on July 28.
According to a social media post made to his account and attributed to his wife Jessica, Friesen suffered fractures to his pelvis and right leg that will require surgery, and he was moved to a larger hospital for those procedures.
Friesen was competing in a Super DIRTcar Series race at Autodrome Drummond in Drummondville, Quebec, Canada, when his No. 44 car jumped the cushion at the end of the backstretch.
The car tipped onto its right side and hit the end of the outside retaining wall, launching the car into a flip, the vehicle barrel-rolling over the barrier multiple times before erupting into flames. Friesen’s car nearly came to a rest on its roof, but was struck by an oncoming competitor who was unable to avoid the wreckage.
The series reported via social media that Friesen was alert and communicating with officials and EMT on site before safety officials aided Friesen from the car. He was then transported to an area hospital for further evaluation.
“Thank you to the manufacturers who have made dirt modifieds as safe as possible, and to the track crew for their patience and hard work getting Stew out of the car,” Jessica Friesen said in a social media post.
Friesen earned his 52nd Super DIRTcar Series win July 29 at Weedsport Speedway in New York and was scheduled to compete at Autodrome Drummond both July 28 and 29 Before his crash in the feature race, Friesen had set the quick time in qualifying and won his heat race.
Friesen has competed in the Craftsman Truck Series since 2016 and has run the full schedule every year since 2018. He has four career wins in NASCAR, including a victory on June 7 at Michigan International Speedway that provisionally locked him into the Truck Series Playoffs.
In the most recent truck race — the 200th of his Truck Series career — Friesen was credited with a last-place finish at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park despite taking the checkered flag third. Friesen’s No. 52 Halmar Friesen Racing Toyota was disqualified in post-race technical inspection after the front of the truck failed to meet the minimum height requirements.
CONCORD, N.C. — As if it were his own superhero origin story, everyone can recall the moment Shane van Gisbergen burst onto the scene and put the Cup Series field on notice with his victory in the inaugural Chicago Street Course race in 2023.
Fast-forward two years, and his road-course dominance has multiplied in his Cup Series rookie campaign as he stares down a potential fourth consecutive victory on the road this weekend at Watkins Glen International (2 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App).
SVG is one of four Cup Series drivers with three or more victories in 2025, but the difference between him and his heavyweight counterparts is that all of the Trackhouse Racing driver’s wins have come on road courses. Christopher Bell is the only other Cup driver to score a road course win this season, winning at COTA in March for his second of three victories.
Many have labeled the three-time Australian Supercars champion as the gold standard when it comes to turning left and right at NASCAR’s top level, a title van Gisbergen is grateful to hold when it comes to battling the series’ best.
“I really love the racing here,” van Gisbergen said during a media availability on Wednesday. “I don’t feel like anyone targets me on the track and tries to take me out or anything. But, yeah, I feel like we’re the benchmark, which is really awesome to be.
“It’s the best thing on the road course. I’ve never really raced the same guy. Every week, there’s someone different. Like, the spread of talent is quite high here, and whoever nails it on a weekend will be up front. It’s pretty cool.”
But a return to Watkins Glen brings bitterness to the forefront of SVG’s mind after the way last year’s race in the Finger Lakes ended.
Van Gisbergen took the lead entering Turn 1 on an overtime restart and looked to put the clamps down on Chris Buescher in the final two laps. But after a rare mistake in the bus stop on the final lap, Buescher got to the rear bumper of the then-Kaulig Racing driver and moved van Gisbergen up the track in Turn 5, creating one of the most memorable finishes at Watkins Glen — and one that got away for the Kiwi.
“I studied it a lot,” van Gisbergen said. “You know, that’s painful whenever you make a mistake that’s entirely your fault. I’m quite self-analytical. I was pretty pissed off about that, and even when I think of it now, you know, it’s just, it’s a mistake I made, and it frustrates me.
“It’s good knowing, like, we looked at all last year’s history on Monday, and all our sectors were good, apart from a couple, and it’s something to work on for this year. But yeah, had confidence knowing we were the fastest car by far last year, and we just need to keep building on that and keep getting better. But we had a good race last year. I remember [Buescher]. He’s a hard, clean racer, and I went and saw him in Victory Lane after, and he’s a nice guy, and, you know, I’m trying to get him back this year.”
But after Watkins Glen, the Cup Series Playoffs begin to crest the horizon with just Richmond and Daytona remaining in the regular season. His three wins have him safely locked in, and his collection of playoff points gives him a cushion to open the Round of 16, although no advantage is safe.
While he continues to adjust to ovals, returning to tracks he has raced before gives SVG confidence that he can show improvement and put together a first round worthy of advancing.
“I see the improvement,” SVG said. “And there’s still a long way to go, but it has been good putting in that work. And yeah, I think Darlington, we had our first top 20 of the year there earlier, and hopefully we just keep getting better, and it helps us in that first round, and hopefully, we can put together three weeks.
“I feel like if you just get through that first round, if you make no mistakes and have three good weeks, you’ll get through. That’s what normally seems to happen. There’s normally one or two big dogs that have had a couple of bad races and miss out, so you just got to be mistake-free.”
Here’s what’s happening in NASCAR with the Iowa Corn 350 at Iowa Speedway in the rearview and the Go Bowling at The Glen at Watkins Glen International (2 p.m. ET, USA Network, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, NBC Sports App) up next.
1. Did Byron just plow his path to the Regular Season Championship?
No. 24 driver William Byron reclaimed the top of the mountain with a clutch victory at Iowa Speedway. He’s looking like the title favorite again, but first, there’s a Regular Season Championship to capture for himself — and keep away from his teammates.
William Byron arrived at Iowa last weekend locked in a fierce battle among the competitors atop the regular-season standings but struggling to find mid-summer momentum. He left as the King of the Corn, settling back in triumphantly as the favorite to win the 2025 Bill France Cup after claiming his first win since the season-opening Daytona 500.
It’s been a season of milestones for the 2017 Xfinity Series champion, who appears headed toward a third straight Cup Series Championship 4 appearance as he seeks his first premier series title. A series-best 910 laps led is already closing in on a career high, with his season-long speed netting out to eight top-five finishes; a handful of which were very near wins that could’ve easily had him leading the series in victories, too.
It’s easy to just look ahead to the postseason as No. 24 clearly has championship-or-bust potential this year — but there’s still a major prize to be won in the next three weeks, and it’s currently his to lose.
Iowa put him back on top for now, but the Regular Season Championship will be decided in the coming races at Watkins Glen, Richmond and Daytona — all of which demand different skillsets and each distinctly testing his championship mettle. His Hendrick Motorsports teammates Chase Elliott (-18) and Kyle Larson (-45) pose his biggest threats, along with Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin (-51) and Christopher Bell (-86), but let’s take a look at Byron’s likelihood of holding onto the top spot — or not — from here as he hopes to collect his first RSC and the ultra-important bonus points that come along with it.
While his Watkins Glen finishes tend to yo-yo between top 10s — like his 2023 win — and finishes outside the top 20, the data suggests this weekend’s winner (if not Shane van Gisbergen, winner at three straight road courses) will likely come out of Hendrick’s stable, despite being arguably the most treacherous race among the three remaining. The team’s road-course dominance is well-established, and it’s corralled five of the last six trophies at The Glen. Of course, the other four wins are split between Elliott and Larson, but the 2021 champ Larson has led just three road-course laps this year, and the most recent of No. 9 ’s whopping seven road-course wins came all the way back in 2021. Hard not to feel like, of the three, Byron has the best outlook this weekend.
Richmond demands late braking skills and short-track aggression, and it’s a self-admitted weak track for him. Yet Hendrick’s consistency as a powerhouse organization has still allowed him to be competitive there a handful of times, evidenced by two Next Gen races in which he led more than 115 laps. Still, this could be his pain point, if there is one.
Daytona, meanwhile, is becoming Byron’s stomping ground — not only is he the two-time defending Daytona 500 winner, the young talent already has three total at NASCAR’s most famous track. If he avoids calamity, the RSC is as good as his.
Byron’s potential RSC run essentially hinges on two pillars, of which he’s quite adept at: maximizing stage points and avoiding costly DNFs. Both of those will be tantamount — and iffy, but mostly out of his hands — at Daytona, but chaos can strike at any time as we’ve seen this season. His two poles and general ability to lay down a quality qualifying lap bolsters his positioning to help with this, but he could be faced with a decision between shooting to add another win or aiming instead for stage points, particularly at The Glen.
With an 18-point buffer and three vastly different circuits ahead that he’s capable of winning at, Byron is in the most enviable position of any of them. But it’s almost always easier to be the predator than the prey, and there are four hungry hunters behind him in the standings ready to pounce.
2. Who will give SVG the biggest run for his money at The Glen?
NASCAR’s native New Zealander looks right at home on the circuit’s road courses. With playoff bids in short supply and just three opportunities remaining to snag one, could a postseason hopeful — or a driver just looking to bolster his positioning — usurp the road-course king?
Shane van Gisbergen’s emergence as NASCAR’s resident road‐course maestro has been completely unsurprising, yet nothing short of meteoric.
In a five-week span earlier this summer, SVG transformed three straight road-course poles into three straight trips to Victory Lane, leading more than half the laps run in said races. His four wins, five top fives and eight top 10s in just 10 Cup road‐course starts underscore his natural affinity for apexes and braking markers that prove that he’s just, well, better than everybody else.
But that doesn’t mean he’s unbeatable.
SVG’s credentials are historic, yes — his three consecutive Cup road-course wins from the pole tied him with Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon, and he’s on the brink of joining Dan Gurney as the only drivers whose first five Cup victories all came on road courses. But ask any Glen veteran, and they’ll point to the track’s high speeds and proclivity for last-lap drama with unpredictable cautions, which most certainly opens the door for an upset.
In fact, Watkins Glen is where SVG tasted defeat a year ago, losing on a boisterous final lap to Chris Buescher in overtime, giving hope to those not quite locked into the playoffs … like Buescher, himself.
No. 17 clearly stands at the forefront of the SVG counter-charge. The only driver to finish top-10 in each of the three Next Gen Watkins Glen races, Buescher out-orchestrated the three-time Supercars champ to pass him on the final lap and claim last year’s overtime victory.
Elliott’s two Glen triumphs (2018, 2019) and 170 laps led at the New York facility place him among its all-time greats, but he just hasn’t been the same kind of road racer in the Next Gen car, at least from a winning standpoint. Finishes of 19th and 32nd in his last two Glen starts (and starting outside the top 10 in each, too) hint at vulnerabilities that could keep him out of Victory Lane at a key time.
Never finishing worse than 14th in his four Glen appearances and quickly becoming one of the top road-course dogs, Bell also should give SVG a run for his money. He’s also the only other driver to win on one of these tracks this year, carrying some momentum from a March COTA victory and three top-two results in his last five road-course starts.
Wild cards lurk beyond this trio, however, including a pair of desperate-to-make-the-playoffs veterans.
Kyle Busch — a two-time Glen winner whose only 2025 top-fives have come on road courses — is running out of chances to ensure he doesn’t miss the playoffs in consecutive seasons for the first time ever. AJ Allmendinger, with a best-among-active-drivers 10.8 average at The Glen, is just as anxious to get back into the postseason.
Then again, we also can’t count out SVG’s teammate Connor Zilisch — the only driver doing triple duty this weekend — as perhaps he’s soon to be the 1B to his Trackhouse compatriot’s 1A on road courses at the Cup Series level in the near future.
Ultimately, while SVG’s pole-to-flag mastery and historic metrics make him the prohibitive favorite as he clamors for more playoff points, Watkins Glen’s storied penchant for final-lap lead changes and overtime finishes ensures no outcome is foregone.
Whether Buescher’s unfailing consistency, Elliott’s road-racing pedigree, Bell’s surging form or a wild-card opportunist can disrupt SVG’s streak, it makes this weekend at The Glen, which never disappoints, a true must-watch.
Chris Graythen | Getty Images
3. SVG on current playoff format: ‘That’s the reason I’m here, right?’
Shane van Gisbergen joins the latest episode of Corey LaJoie’s Stacking Pennies podcast and shares his thoughts on the pressure the playoff format creates.
4. Active drivers whose first Cup win came at a road course
There are six drivers in positions 17 through 30 in the playoff standings that are not only looking to make their mark on this year’s postseason — but also aiming to capture their first NASCAR Cup Series win. This weekend, historically speaking, presents an excellent opportunity to accomplish both. (Credit: Racing Insights)
Date
Track
Driver
Cup Wins
8/10/14
Watkins Glen
AJ Allmendinger
3
8/5/18
Watkins Glen
Chase Elliott
19
2/21/21
Daytona RC
Christopher Bell
12
3/27/22
COTA
Ross Chastain
6
6/12/22
Sonoma
Daniel Suárez
2
7/3/22
Road America
Tyler Reddick
8
7/2/23
Chicago Street
Shane van Gisbergen
4
5. Catch the pack — news and notes from around the garage
The NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series returns to Watkins Glen International on Friday for the first time since 2021 (5 p.m. ET, FS1, NRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). FS2 will air Truck Series qualifying at 12:40 p.m. ET Friday after teams participate in a 50-minute combined practice session earlier in the day at 11:35 a.m. ET on FS2.
Saturday’s qualifying session will consist of one round, split into two 20-minute groups. The groups below are determined via a metric that combines the previous race finish by owner (70%) and current owner points position (30%).
The race itself will occur on Saturday afternoon (3 p.m. ET, The CW, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Saturday’s qualifying session will consist of one round, split into two 20-minute groups. The groups below are determined via a metric that combines the previous race finish by owner (70%) and current owner points position (30%).
The race itself will occur on Sunday (2 p.m. ET, USA, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
Though he’s out for the remainder of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series season, Stewart Friesen still might request a waiver to be eligible for the playoffs.
NASCAR managing director of communications Mike Forde explained during the latest episode of the “Hauler Talk” podcast that there would be a financial incentive to make the 10-driver playoff despite being unable to start a race. Because of injuries sustained in a dirt race last week, Friesen will miss the last two races of the regular season — which would make him ineligible for the Truck playoffs without a waiver from NASCAR.
“If we grant the waiver, he would be in the playoffs, even though he’s not starting any races,” Forde said. “He would be guaranteed to finish 10th and get that 10th-place point fund money. So that’s up to the team if they want to ask for a waiver. And if they do, then it’s up to NASCAR to decide how to handle that situation.”
NASCAR had a similar situation in 2022 with Kurt Busch, who qualified for the Cup Series playoffs but was sidelined by an injury two months later. When it became evident he’d be unable to return for the 16-driver playoffs, Busch declined to request a waiver, which opened a spot for another driver to contend for the championship.
A major difference is that in the Cup Series’ charter system, the season-ending points fund payouts are based solely on where a car finishes in the team owner standings (Busch’s No. 45 Toyota still finished in the top 16 even though the driver couldn’t).
In the Craftsman Truck Series, there are separate points funds with money distributions based on the team owner points standings and the driver points standings. Regardless of Friesen’s injury, his No. 52 Halmar Friesen Racing Toyota will finish in the top 10 of the team owner standings (with substitute drivers Christopher Bell and Kaden Honeycutt), but Friesen, who qualified for the playoffs with a victory at Michigan International Speedway, would finish well outside the top 10 in the driver standings without a playoff waiver.
“If he does ask for and is granted a waiver, then there really would be only nine drivers who would be contending for the championship,” Forde said.
If Friesen declined to request or was denied a waiver, Forde said the next highest-ranked driver in points would fill the playoff slot.
Friesen is precluded from requesting a waiver until he misses a race, which will happen Friday at Watkins Glen International. A waiver request would be considered by a panel of NASCAR officials, and their decision would be sent to the NASCAR board of directors for approval.
Other topics covered during the 26th episode of “Hauler Talk,” which explores competition issues in NASCAR:
— Why some teams had problems with staying under the pit-road speeding limit at Iowa Speedway.
— How NASCAR addressed oil on the track during the Xfinity race that caused a late caution flag.
— The likelihood of horsepower changes on short tracks next season.
— The future of Iowa Speedway on the Cup schedule and whether it will include a repaving.
— A new restart zone at Watkins Glen International this weekend.
Click on the embed above to listen or search for “Hauler Talk” wherever you download podcasts to hear it on your phone, tablet or mobile device.
Nate Ryan has written about NASCAR since 1996 while working at the San Bernardino Sun, Richmond Times-Dispatch, USA TODAY and for the past 10 years at NBC Sports Digital. He is a contributor to the “Hauler Talk” show on the NASCAR Podcast Network. He also has covered various other motorsports, including the IndyCar and IMSA series.
