A familiar sight played out on Sunday in Wine Country as New Zealand's Shane van Gisbergen came out victorious for his eighth road course win in 16 starts after holding off a furious charge from Chase Briscoe for the second year in a row.
While he still led 74 of the 110 laps and appeared to dominate the race for anyone who may have missed it, it was far from a walk in the park for the road course master. Even with Briscoe chasing him down with the better handling car, it was still not enough to knock van Gisbergen off his perch as NASCAR's road racing king.
While Sonoma proved that van Gisbergen is mortal on road courses, he was still too much for the rest of the field to deal with at the northern California track. That masterclass on Sunday helped him gain three spots in points, rising from 17th to 14th. He has a 36-point advantage over Erik Jones, who is the top driver below the playoff cut line, with eight regular season races remaining on the schedule.
Although that advantage could have been even greater had he not been caught up in the crash caused by Austin Hill on Naval Base Coronado, van Gisbergen has at least put himself in a position to make the 16-driver Chase field. The question remains if he can stay there with zero road courses remaining on the schedule.
Shane van Gisbergen looking to limit mistakes on ovals
He still has a way to go to compete with the top drivers in the series on ovals, but there have been moments this season where he has done exactly what NASCAR fans thought he couldn't and run up front on them.
One of those races was at Nashville Superspeedway, where van Gisbergen finished a career-best fifth on an oval after leading 12 laps and running among the top 10 throughout the race. That came one week after he came home 11th in the Coca-Cola 600 and showed that he is capable of stringing positive results together away from the road courses.
However, that stretch was quickly followed by back-to-back finishes of 30th or worse on the non-road courses of Michigan International Speedway and Pocono Raceway. It's why van Gisbergen was quick to point out where his mentality lies ahead of the regular season's final eight races during his post-race media availability following his Sonoma win.
"Now I just have to do my best every week and keep improving, don't do anything stupid, just accumulate points, and I can't get in stupid accidents like Pocono with people," van Gisbergen said, per NASCAR.com.
"And yeah, just 10th to 15th is good enough for us, and better if we can, and yeah, try to get stage points. That's always been something difficult I've found on ovals, so yeah, qualify well, start up front and hopefully we get better. But yeah, it's gonna be consistent finishes every week and having a points mentality will hopefully get us there."
However, after NASCAR elected to bring back a version of the Chase that was previously used from 2004 to 2013 before the start of the 2026 season, it was easy to point to van Gisbergen as one of the drivers who could be hurt the most by the new format. After all, he barely would have made the Chase if it had been implemented last season, even with four wins.
With wins no longer guaranteeing a postseason appearance, the pressure was magnified even more on van Gisbergen to maximize his points on the four road and street courses and try to improve and rely on consistency at the ovals. Even though he won two of the four road and street course races, he still left a lot of points on the table and heads into the next eight races looking to avoid the DNFs that have plagued several of the drivers around him near the cut line.
The historic dominance on road courses has put van Gisbergen just one victory behind Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon for the most in NASCAR history as he continues to set the bar for the rest of the field. Now with the attention turning to the ovals for the rest of the 2026 season, all eyes will be on van Gisbergen's performance to see if he can be consistent enough to qualify for the Chase.
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