Shane van Gisbergen and his crew are looking for a turnaround Sunday after claiming the pole at Watkins Glen.
Matt Kelley | AP file photo
Connor Zilisch says he’s been a playful target of weekly social media memes since his scary fall while celebrating in victory lane at Watkins Glen International last year.
But the barbs really picked up two weeks ago after Carson Hocevar won at Talladega Superspeedway and took a daring victory lap while hanging out of his car without any hands on the wheel.
“I got tagged in so many things saying, ‘Don’t let Connor do this!’” said Zilisch, who broke his collarbone after losing his balance exiting the car but avoided missing a start with the injury. “So I’m certainly never going to live that one down. But I definitely get some comedic relief out of it. And it was a little bit scary at first. I’m sure my mom wouldn’t laugh about it still today, but at least I can laugh about it.”
The humor is welcome during a difficult rookie season in the Cup Series. In this case, it’s his team that has taken a figurative tumble.
Trackhouse Racing has endured a miserable year with a combined four top-10 finishes in 11 races between Zilisch, Shane van Gisbergen and Ross Chastain. Their three Chevrolets are ranked below the cutline to qualify for the Chase, the 10-race run for the championship to close the season.
But Sunday’s race at Watkins Glen has been circled as prime for a turnaround.
As the defending winner on the 2.45-mile road course in New York last August, van Gisbergen has won five of the past six races on road or street courses in Cup. Zilisch has four wins at Watkins Glen in NASCAR’s lower series, and Chastain has a pole position and a top five.
“Yeah, you definitely feel a buzz in the shop,” said van Gisbergen, who set a rookie record last year with five wins. “It’s been pretty difficult to start the year. We haven’t been where we expected or hoped to be. You’re never just going to turn up and have magically fast cars. We still lack in some areas, and the drivers still need to be better, too.”
Van Gisbergen celebrated his 37th birthday on Saturday by gifting himself the top starting spot at Watkins Glen International. He qualified first, earning the fifth pole of his Cup Series career in his 62nd start — the fastest to reach that mark in nearly 20 years. Denny Hamlin needed 49 starts to capture his fifth pole in April 2007.
Seeking to defend a dominant win last August at Watkins Glen, van Gisbergen is expecting tire management will be a major factor in Sunday’s 100-lap race. During practice, lap times dropped by 4 to 5 seconds over the course of a run as drivers found extra speed in cool, damp conditions. After 42 Cup races in the summer at Watkins Glen, Sunday will mark the first held during the spring.
“I expected it to be faster, but the falloff was insane,” said van Gisbergen, who became the ninth Cup driver to qualify first on his birthday with his first pole since last July at Sonoma Raceway. “I didn’t expect it to be that extreme. It was kind of like Bristol when it’s cold, and the tires would fall apart. It was very interesting. It’ll be a good race to watch but probably a hard one to manage.”
The New Zealand native will be the favorite, having won five of the last six races on road or street courses in NASCAR’s premier series. Michael McDowell qualified a season-best second, nearly 0.3 seconds behind van Gisbergen’s No. 97 Chevrolet.
“I feel like SVG kicked my butt,” said McDowell, whose No. 71 Chevy has finished outside the top 20 in four consecutive races. “But I’m really proud of everybody at Spire Motorsports. It’s been a rough few weeks here. Tire falloff was incredible in practice, so we got a decent lap in there, but man, then you watch how fast SVG is.”
Austin Cindric qualified third, followed by Chastain and Zilisch. The team is off to a slow start with only a combined four top 10s this season.
“We’ve got some good cars here this weekend, and hopefully we can capitalize on that,” van Gisbergen said.
Coming off his second win of the season, Chase Elliott, who leads active drivers with seven road-course wins, qualified a career-worst 27th at Watkins Glen (site of his first Cup win in 2018).
Prior to this weekend, one of the lone bright spots for Trackhouse was the March 1 race at Circuit of The Americas, where van Gisbergen finished second, and Zilisch ran in the top five before getting spun.
The Trackhouse trio is pulling triple-duty this weekend in NASCAR’s top three national series, hoping the extra laps will help on an altered layout (tire packs have been added to narrow the track in two sections). It already paid off Saturday for Zilisch, who made a last-lap pass to win his third consecutive O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race at Watkins Glen.
“This is a great opportunity for all of us to get back on the right track, get some good points,” Zilisch said. “Ross and Shane are really close to the (Chase), so a good weekend would be really important for just the energy inside the building. We’ve been really hungry, and there’s no sense of giving up. This is not where we want to be as a team, and it’s certainly shocked us, and we know that we need to get to work. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the (team) work this hard.”
All three Trackhouse drivers finished outside the top 15 at Texas Motor Speedway, but van Gisbergen said last Sunday’s race was “promising” with speed improvements.
“We’re still not amazing, but we definitely were all happier with our cars,” he said. “So the main thing is the mood on Mondays. No one’s angry at each other. We’re just working together really well.”
Zilisch has a season best of 14th at COTA, and a breakthrough Cup win would have him (cautiously) jumping for joy.
“That might bring some more excitement out of me,” he said. “And that victory lane obviously owes me a bit after last year.”
PENALTY APPEAL
Ryan Preece was “surprised” to be fined $50,000 and docked 25 points after being involved in Ty Gibbs’ crash at Texas. Replays were inconclusive whether the cars made contact, and Preece radioed his team he didn’t touch Gibbs.
NASCAR vice president of race communications Mike Forde said a key reason for the penalty was an earlier radio transmission in which Preece angrily vowed to wreck Gibbs. Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing is appealing Preece’s penalty, and a NASCAR spokesman said Saturday that a date still needs to be set for the hearing.
“I’m excited to go through the appeals process, because at least I can share my side,” Preece said.
LEGGE PUTS IN WORK
After making her 2026 Cup debut at Watkins Glen, Katherine Legge will catch a 5 a.m. flight Monday to make the start of Indianapolis 500 practice Tuesday.
Legge, who began racing in NASCAR’s premier series with seven starts last year, wants to become the first woman to race the Indy 500 and Coca-Cola 600 on the same day. She said Saturday that her cosmetics sponsor has shown interest in backing a “groundbreaking, glass ceiling-breaking” program.
“I think it would be awesome,” said the 45-year-old Englishwoman, who has a best finish of 22nd in four Indy 500 starts. “A lot of people have mentioned that. So I hope that I get the opportunity one day down the road.”
ODDS AND ENDS
Sportsbooks list van Gisbergen as the favorite at about +130, followed by Zilisch (+400) and points leader Tyler Reddick (+750), who won at COTA, the season’s first road course. … Elliott is tied with Christopher Bell for the most top fives (11) on road courses since the 2022 debut of the Next Gen car, but Elliott is in a five-year win drought on road courses. The most recent of his seven road-course wins was on July 4, 2021, at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin (the track dropped off the schedule in 2023).
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