Shane van Gisbergen led Trackhouse Racing with an 11th-place finish in the Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR Cup Series race at Charlotte (N.C.) Motor Speedway on Sunday evening. Teammate Ross Chastain placed 35th and Connor Zilisch was credited with 39th-place.
“It’s hard,” said SVG. “I had an amazing day, but I’m pissed. We were a top-five or six car, but we just didn’t execute at the end.
“It was really cool to run up front all day. We were gifted a good starting position with qualifying getting canceled. It was a good call by Stephen (Doran, crew chief) to stay out there. It was awesome to be able to lead some laps.”
Van Gisbergen started third on Sunday evening at Charlotte after Saturday’s qualifying session was cancelled due to weather. He had an impressive performance from the start, running inside the top 10 for the entire first stage. He slightly battled the handling of the No. 97 SuperFile Chevrolet before coming to pit road when the caution came out on lap 53 and went on to finish the stage 10th.
In the second and third stage, van Gisbergen continued to run inside the top 10 and grabbed more stage points in both stages finishing ninth and seventh. In the final stage, he started sixth and the caution came out on lap 318.
The No. 97 team opted to stay out while others came to pit road, putting van Gisbergen in position to restart second. Van Gisbergen took the lead on the restart and led 11 laps before the caution flew on lap 329. He then stayed out, restarting first and battled to maintain the lead for the first couple of laps before dropping back to third.
Then the caution few on lap 353, the No. 97 team chose to come to pit for tires and fuel in hopes to set them up for the final 47 laps. On lap 373 the race was halted due to rain and ultimately called official, crediting van Gisbergen with an 11th-place finish.
The NASCAR Cup Series will return to action Sunday, May 31 at Nashville (Tenn.) Superspeedway.
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