Shane van Gisbergen won the Watkins Glen Cup race in the No. 97 Chevrolet on Sunday, turning a rough practice into another road-course victory and leaving the field to chase him home. The Trackhouse driver said the car was excellent when it mattered, and that the team’s late changes and race-day calls made the difference.
Van Gisbergen said the team was not very good in practice, but qualifying changed everything after the crew found the right tweaks. He said Stephen Doran made great calls during the race, and that running down the leaders felt especially meaningful because it secured two straight wins. The driver also thanked Trackhouse after the victory and said the Chevy was great all day.
The win mattered because it came against a tight group at the front and after van Gisbergen said he was not sure how the day would unfold. He said there was a lot of pressure in the race, naming Michael McDowell, Connor Zilisch and Tyler Reddick among the drivers who made the fight difficult. By the end, he said it was special to execute across every part of the effort and come away with another win.
McDowell finished second and said Spire got a Chevrolet into the top five. He said the team slipped a little off strategy in the second stage, then recovered well when Travis Peterson helped regain track position. McDowell said he restarted 27th and worked quickly back near the top ten, but did not quite have enough to catch van Gisbergen at the end. He pointed to top five at COTA and top five at Mexico as signs that the road course program has come around.
Ty Gibbs finished third and said he had to save fuel late, even though he wished he could keep racing. He said it was good to come home with a third-place finish and called the day fun, while Chase Briscoe took fourth and said James Small did a really good job of putting the team in position to maximize the result. Briscoe said the race turned into a difficult balance between saving fuel and racing hard enough not to lose ground.
The result adds another marker to van Gisbergen’s rapid rise on road courses and gives Trackhouse another win to lean on as the season moves on. For McDowell, Gibbs and Briscoe, Watkins Glen offered evidence that the fight at the front is getting tighter, but not tight enough yet to unseat the driver in the No. 97 Chevrolet.
