Shane van Gisbergen has transformed the NASCAR road racing world ever since the day he made his Cup Series debut on the Chicago Street Course in 2023. Only three years later, he's already only one win shy of tying Jeff Gordon's all-time record of nine victories on the track type.
Ever since van Gisbergen moved to full-time Cup Series racing in 2025, he has earned seven of 10 possible road or street course wins. Take out Circuit of the Americas and it's seven of eight, with the lone exception coming on Naval Base Coronado a week ago when he was wrecked by Austin Hill. His dominance has been so overwhelming that sometimes, it doesn't even feel like the field has a chance.
At Sonoma Raceway on Sunday, the field had a chance. And they still couldn't beat him.
Shane van Gisbergen's Sonoma win shows there is nothing easy about his road course dominance
The Toyotas have been the overwhelmingly fastest cars all season in the Cup Series, and that was no different at Sonoma. Ty Gibbs won the pole. Denny Hamlin, who by his own admission is far from a road course expert, ran in the top 10 before a late spin. And in the final laps, it was Chase Briscoe running down van Gisbergen with a very clearly better-handling No. 19 machine.
It didn't matter. The New Zealand native held on, and the field will have to wait until next year to try their hand at him again.
In past road course races, we have seen van Gisbergen merely toy with his competition. He lays back early in a run to conserve his tires and then drops the hammer, cruising to the victory by some obscene margin. At Watkins Glen International this year, he even won despite having to make an extra pit stop late in the race. He makes what he does look easy.
Make no mistake: it has never been easy.
Van Gisbergen stated himself last week that it's disrespectful to his competition to assume he can win every road course going away. At Sonoma, he was unhappy with his car all weekend, and nobody listened, because we've all seen him give false hope to the field before.
In the closing laps on Sunday, everybody was waiting for that point in the run where van Gisbergen would quit playing with his food and drive away by double-digit seconds over Briscoe. It never happened. The gap only closed, all the way until the final corners.
And he still won anyway.
Van Gisbergen's latest triumph is the ultimate vindication of what is so truly remarkable about his success. His wins are pure driver's wins. There isn't anyone else who could hop in his car and do what he does. And that is why any fans who may feel fatigued with his dominance should appreciate what they're witnessing.
The unfortunate truth about auto racing is that the most talented drivers don't always have cars fast enough to win. This season, you can pencil in one of the Toyotas on nearly every high-speed intermediate track simply because of how ridiculous their advantage is. It's no fun watching Hamlin and Tyler Reddick hog up all the checkered flags when everybody knows Kyle Larson and Ryan Blaney are just as good as they are. But they can only extract so much speed out of their equipment.
There are no such excuses with van Gisbergen on the road courses. On Sunday, the field beat the No. 97 car. But they couldn't beat the driver.
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