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Chris Buescher outduels Shane Van Gisbergen; NASCAR playoff contenders crash
By Matt Weaver,
1 days ago
Chris Buescher outdueled Shane Van Gisbergen in an instant classic of a NASCAR Cup Series finish on Sunday at Watkins Glen International.
Van Gisbergen was able to nudge past Buescher on the final restart, but broke traction on the bus stop chicane on the final lap, returning the bumper and driving to his sixth career victory at the highest level and fifth for RFK Racing over the past three years.
It was his first win since last August at Daytona.
“Just, man, to stay right there with him, that was the spot that he was better than us,” Buescher said on the USA Network television broadcast. “He missed it. He missed it, so I tried to cross over. Went to cut and just hard race there. Just such an awesome finish. To be that good for so much at the end of the race, all race, to get a win, it’s good. We came here to be a spoiler. We’re going to do that where.
Van Gisbergen knew he opened the door for retaliation and that’s what led to the mistake.
“Driver error,” said SVG. “I knew Chris was really going to send it and push me if he could get there. As I turned and got a bit loose and clipped the inside wall and driver error. I’m gutted.”
But he also said all of it was fair play too.
“I think so,” Van Gisbergen said. “It was a little bump to get him wide. I knew I was going to get it back, so that’s why I was pushing so hard. It is what it is, but just gutted.”
The results featured an eclectic mix of playoff underdogs and non-contenders throughout the top-10, including all three Spire Motorsports cars in the form of Carson Hocevar, Ross Chastain, Zane Smith, Chase Briscoe, Michael McDowell, Corey Lajoie, Ryan Preece and Austin Cindric.
To wit, the race was also a grind for nearly everyone in the playoffs and resulting in a drastic shake-up of the first round standings with just the Bristol Night Race left before the first four cuts.
Christopher Bell, Ryan Blaney and Denny Hamlin were involved in a first lap stack-up that involved also involved Kyle Busch, Preece and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. The incident eliminated Blaney immediately from contention and Hamlin suffered a myriad of steering and body issues.
Blaney felt like NASCAR never gave his team a chance to repair the car, asking for a difference between towing a car with flat tires and allowing teams to fix it versus not even allowing the Penske 12 team to assess their car.
Hamlin was further damaged on Lap 43 when he found himself on the outside of a three-wide scenario involving fellow playoff drivers Brad Keselowski and Kyle Larson.
Ross Chastain and Shane Van Gisbergen had held the top two spots for 40 laps on the same set of tires, negating the much-ballyhooed soft sets of tires Goodyear developed for this race.
Playoff longshot Harrison Burton suffered a left rear tire shred with 11 laps to go, which led to a series of crashes and restarts, many of them involving playoff drivers. That includes this major pileup involving Keselowski and William Byron.
Regular season champion Tyler Reddick was involved in several incidents during the race, including one on a late restart with Kyle Busch, one that also collected and damaged playoff drivers Chase Elliott and Martin Truex Jr., the latter whom has nine finishes of 20th or worse over his last 10 starts and faces long odds to advance into the second round.
This is what that dynamic looks like heading into the Bristol Night Race.
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