NASCAR Watkins Glen takeaways: Shane van Gisbergen posts a massive rally to win

After a green-flag pit stop, van Gisbergen came from 26th place to the lead in 17 laps, winning for the second straight time at Watkins Glen. Chris Graythen / Getty Images Share article1WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. — Shane van Gisbergen has made a habit of doing jaw-dropping things on NASCAR road-course races, but Sunday’s victory at Watkins Glen International took it to an entirely different level. Due to a jumbled strategy in the field, van Gisbergen had to make a pit stop under the green flag with 25 laps remaining and emerged in 26th place — a whopping 29.2 seconds behind the field. As good as van Gisbergen is, and for as much talent as he has shown since arriving in NASCAR from Australia’s Supercars, a half-minute deficit on a road course, where passing was difficult for many on Sunday, seemed like too tall an order even for him. Maybe he could get a top-five finish and salvage the day. The latter is exactly what van Gisbergen did, erasing that 29-second deficit in just 17 laps. If he’s not already NASCAR’s greatest road-course racer of all time, it’s tough to make an argument for many, if any, ahead of him. What a drive by @shanevg97! pic.twitter.com/ILywNKSnpt — NASCAR (@NASCAR) May 10, 2026 “I wasn’t sure how it was going to work, and then to run them down like that, very special to do two in a row,” van Gisbergen said after going back-to-back at the Glen. Van Gisbergen now has seven road-racing victories during his short time in NASCAR for Trackhouse Racing after showing up for a one-off start and shocking the stock car world with a win in the inaugural Chicago Street Course Race in 2023. Despite not being an oval specialist and still very much in the learning process on the circle tracks, van Gisbergen now holds a provisional spot in NASCAR’s 16-driver Chase for the Cup after the first 12 races of the year, nearing the halfway point of the regular season. And he did so by stamping an exclamation mark onto the day, winning by 7.3 seconds. “We have a race car driver who is at a level I don’t think this sport has ever seen before on these road courses,” Trackhouse owner Justin Marks said. Michael McDowell finished second, followed by Ty Gibbs, Chase Briscoe and Tyler Reddick — who had won this season’s first road race. Austin Dillon had a surprise sixth-place finish for Richard Childress Racing, followed by AJ Allmendinger, Kyle Busch, Austin Cindric and John Hunter Nemechek to round out the top 10. NASCAR now heads to Dover Motor Speedway for its annual exhibition All-Star Race. The points season resumes in two weeks with the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. For a portion of the race, it looked like van Gisbergen’s Trackhouse teammate Connor Zilisch, the wunderkind Cup rookie, might be the only driver to challenge him. But after going off strategy from van Gisbergen and needing to save fuel, Zilisch’s team made the wrong pit decision after he was passed with eight laps remaining. To make matters worse, Zilisch had to pit with a flat tire and finished 20th instead of either third (which is where Gibbs finished on the same strategy) or fourth. It’s been a frustrating season for Zilisch, who came off an eye-catching campaign in the second-tier O’Reilly Series and entered the Cup Series with high hopes. But Zilisch, who won Saturday’s O’Reilly race at the Glen, now has back-to-back top-20 finishes for the first time all year and is still only 32nd in the point standings. Trackhouse has struggled as a whole throughout all three of its cars this season, with Ross Chastain, a typically reliable playoff driver, 19th in points. But on a road course, where drivers typically matter more than on ovals, van Gisbergen and Zilisch can elevate their cars to better finishes. After Chase Elliott won at Texas Motor Speedway last week, he quickly refocused and looked at Watkins Glen as a place where his team needed to improve after one of its worst races of 2025. “My mind has 100 percent shifted to here and reflecting on how terrible last year was, and that’s given me a lot of motivation and energy to want to try and better that this weekend,” Elliott said. That wasn’t the case for Elliott nor the rest of his Hendrick Motorsports teammates, as none of them finished inside the top 20 on Sunday. Kyle Larson was 23rd, Elliott was 24th, Alex Bowman was 25th and William Byron finished 36th after being involved in an early-race incident. Though Elliott remains third in the standings, he lost more ground to points leader Reddick and second-place Denny Hamlin, who finished 16th. Larson also lost ground and remained eighth in the points while Byron fell two spots to 12th in the standings. For as much of a powerhouse as Hendrick remains, its inconsistency on certain types of tracks seems to be a concern halfway through the regular season. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms