Shane van Gisbergen fell short of a record-setting win in Sunday’s Duramax Texas Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas. The road course ace admitted that he didn’t ‘quite have enough’ to overcome the day’s most dominant driver, Tyler Reddick.
Van Gisbergen entered the 95-lap event having won the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race a day prior. The result snapped his winless streak at the track, and SVG was vying to replicate the same on Sunday.
However, van Gisbergen began on the backfoot with a 13th-place start, while Reddick began on pole for the second consecutive race. SVG parsed through the field to finish second in Stage 1, one spot behind his Trackhouse Racing teammate, Ross Chastain.
After a 10th-place finish in Stage 2, SVG reached second once again by lap 80. Despite his best efforts, van Gisbergen couldn’t pass a faster Reddick. With five laps to go, the Kiwi driver radioed that he lacked the speed and grip in comparison to Reddick up ahead.
When the No.45 driver reached the finish line, he’d pulled a 3.944-second gap to van Gisbergen. Reflecting upon the same, the Trackhouse driver said(via X/NASCAR on FOX),
“Disappointed with second. But the series is just at a high level. I felt okay, we got our Safety Culture Chevy a lot better than yesterday, but just following Tyler, his driving was immaculate and his car was very good too so, I tried but didn’t quite have enough, but still a great points day for the 97.”
Shane van Gisbergen had a good points day nonetheless, as he jumped 11 spots on the table to finish fifth.
Shane van Gisbergen shares struggles with ‘average’ car in COTA
Shane van Gisbergen showed blistering pace in his O’Reilly Auto Parts Series win at COTA, but his Cup Series qualifying paled in comparison. After Saturday’s race, SVG outlined his struggles with the No.97 Chevy.
“Not very good. My car was pretty average, really. The race run was okay, but in qualifying, start of the race run, I just couldn’t switch it on, and you need that round here to just light it up, and I couldn’t do it, so I did a rolling lap and then it still wasn’t good, and then I did my time on my third lap, and, yeah, really struggled. But there were some things that I wasn’t doing very well,” he said.
A COTA win would’ve placed Shane van Gisbergen alongside Jeff Burton for most consecutive road course wins. His streak now ends with five wins, all of which came from last year alone.
Till now, the New Zealander has racked up 11 road course wins across the top-2 divisions. Tyle Reddick, meanwhile, made history by becoming the first driver in NASCAR history to win the opening three races.
Edited by Vignesh Kanna