Shane van Gisbergen won his second straight Xfinity Series race on Saturday, besting the field in the Zip Buy Now, Pay Later 250 at Sonoma Raceway — but not without a little drama.
Van Gisbergen passed Austin Hill into turn two of the final restart with 11 laps remaining to take the lead and would not relinquish it. In order to make the pass, van Gisbergen had to come up the hill while riding slightly on the grass. As a result, he made contact with Hill who did everything in his power to leave Van Gisbergen without a place. Van Gisbergen won the race while Hill finished fifth.
In Van Gisbergen’s mind, the two were now equal. Hill cost him a chance to win the COTA race last March, a race that Kyle Larson eventually won.
“I hate racing and thinking that way, but for me, we’ve got the race over each other now,” Van Gisbergen said. nascar.com. “I don’t know. He didn’t go into the corner and plan to take him out. I didn’t want to knock him off the track, but I was going to try to pass him and I did everything I could. And when he kept choosing left on the restart, I was like, ‘Oh, that’s surprising,’ because I chose left on The first reboot, it was a mistake and if I had the chance again I would have chosen correct every time.
“Once he picked the left, I realized this was a good opportunity to hang out [of Turn 1] And I forced my way to the inside at turn two. Like I didn’t pull it off right, you know? “I just made a hole and got over it.”
As for Hale, he wanted no part in giving his real opinion, but simply offered to “plead the fifth.”
“I haven’t really seen the reboot is the best — redacted — but, you know, I’ll leave it to the keyboard warriors on that; mistake. …I don’t know… I beg for the fifth; I won’t say anything about that. We’ll just move on to the next stage. Good hard racing, Bennett’s Chevrolet was as fast as the Xfinity Internet, and we were putting off the SVG there for a while.
“I had that caution, I knew it was going to be tough at the start of the season, and it didn’t work out, but we had a good points day, finished in the top five… I couldn’t ask for more than that.”
