Shane van Gisbergen spins twice, still earns career-best oval Cup finish

Shane van Gisbergen had an eventful race at EchoPark Speedway (Atlanta) on Sunday. The site of his best oval showing in the NASCAR O'Reilly Auto Parts Series (third) is now the site of his best oval finish in Cup, finishing an impressive sixth.

SVG did that despite two mid-race trips through the infield grass on the way to improving on his previous best oval finish of tenth at Kansas last fall. 

Van Gisbergen started the race outside the top 20, but quickly moved forward. By the end of Stage 2, he was in position to score a lot of stage points. He surged ahead in the final corner, and was attempting to pass Kyle Larson for third (eight points) when Larson came all the way down the track and across SVG's nose.

Larson admits fault in SVG incident

Van Gisbergen spun wildly into the infield while Larson crashed into the outside wall, ending his day. The two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion took full responsibility for the incident.

"Yeah, I just screwed up," said Larson in a media scrum that included Motorsport.com outside the infield care center. "I knew the No. 45 [Tyler Reddick] was inside of me at a point in the corner. I got clear of him, but didn't quite realize that the No. 97 [SVG] had gotten inside of him, so once I was clear, I just wanted to cut distance and short-cut my way to the finish of the stage. I hung a quick left and ran right into him [SVG]. Nothign anybody else did wrong besides me. All on me, and hate it."

SVG quickly rebounded, but while knocking on the door of the top-ten, he spun on his own exiting Turn 4 and took another off-road excursion through the infield grass. Despite all that, the No. 97 Chevrolet was still pretty much intact. He did not appear near the front again until the very end of the race, as he was among those who pitted for fresh tires during one of the late cautions.

The battle to the finish

With better grip, he cut a path forward, and restarted seventh for the final overtime restart. In the middle of a three-wide situation, he found teammate Ross Chastain and pushed him forward. At the white flag, SVG was actually running fourth, right behind Chastain.

He pushed up in the final corner, allowing Carson Hocevar and Daniel Suarez to sneak by, but sixth was still enough for Sunday's race to become his new best showing on an oval at the Cup level.

The points haul was significant as well. After a 30th-place finish in the Daytona 500 put him 28th in the championship standings, this weekend's result vaults him up to 16th in the points. At the end of Race #26, the top 16 drivers in the standings will advance into 'The Chase' after NASCAR reconfigured its championship format for 2026.