CHICAGO – When Shane van Gisbergen got the call from Justin Marks, it sparked his interest in the NASCAR Cup Series. He studied the races, the riders and the cars.
Turns out he was a pretty good student.
Van Gisbergen won his Cup Series debut on a rainy Sunday in downtown Chicago, chasing Justin Haley And Chasing Elliott in a memorable ending to the series’ first street race.
After overtaking Elliott, van Gisbergen dueled Haley in the final rounds before the three-time Supercar champion took the lead. Haley holds second place and Elliott is third.
“The races, the battles are really exciting,” Van Gisbergen said. “But everyone is respectful and clean. It’s really cool.”
Van Gisbergen, 34, of New Zealand, became the first driver to win his Cup Series debut since Johnny Rutherford in the second qualifying race at Daytona in 1963.
He had the opportunity to drive a Chevrolet No. 91 in Chicago as part of Trackhouse Racing’s Project 91. Marks owns the Trackhouse, and the goal of the Project 91 program is to give international riders the opportunity to compete in NASCAR.
“Here’s a shower idea,” says Marks. “I mean I think of myself as a huge fan of all the different types of motorsport and I’ve raced in all the different types of motorsport. I want to bring motorsport all the way. his favorite request to NASCAR.”
When van Gisbergen was credited as the Round 25 lead, it was the first round to lead the Project 91 in three starts. He became the sixth driver born outside the United States to win a NASCAR Cup Series race, along with Marcos Ambrose, Mario Andretti, Juan Pablo Montoya, Earl Ross and Daniel Suárez.
“He would go home and tell all his friends how bad we were,” Elliott said.
Van Gisbergen won his first Supercar championship in 2016 and two more in the past two years. He was helped on his NASCAR debut by Darian Grubb, who was Tony Stewart’s team leader when he won the Cup Series championship in 2011.
Trackhouse Racing also won the Cup Series race last weekend with Ross Chastain at the Nashville Expressway.
“I’m a Tony Stewart fan, so working with Darian was quite special,” van Gisbergen said.
Kyle Larson ranked fourth in Chicago, followed by Kyle Busch And Austin Cindric. Christopher Bell won two races and led the top 37 laps, but faded into 18th place.
The race was scheduled for 100 laps and 220 miles, but it was cut short due to fading sunlight after the start was delayed by more than 90 minutes because of the historic rain that flooded the track. The second half of the Xfinity race, set to resume after it was halted on Saturday because of lightning, was cancelled.
Just before the scheduled start, when it rained for a long time, the pole keeper Denny Hamlin put on twitter to lobby for a delay, and Noah Gragson post videos about one of his tires floating in the tunnel. NASCAR then decided to allow drivers to return to their vehicles.
NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell said they never planned to start at the time.
“What we wanted to do was get everything we needed to be able to activate the muscle and help us continue to care,” he said. “So when we know hey, the track is ready to go, you know, we’re not going to go through the national anthem intro, drivers and stuff like that.”
The weather cleared up eventually, but there were puddles on the track when the race started. Even as it started to dry out — and teams started removing their slick tyres — water splashed everywhere every time the driver slid into the bar.
“Definitely adding a bit of momentum to the race is not super rare,” said Elliott. “We’ve been through that scenario before. But adding that to an already new and different atmosphere and different circuit is a bit odd.”
Gragson, Busch and Joey Logano all visited the tire rows in Turn 6. Hamlin and Elliott entered the tire in Turn 2. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. hit by Bubba Wallace and got stuck in the tire bar on Turn 1 at the end of the race.
There was also a huge pile on the 50th lap involving 14 cars turning onto East Jackson Drive from Michigan Avenue, clogging the roadway and almost certainly attracting smiles from smart Chicago drivers. are often familiar with the area.
“It was definitely a first-class event. I obviously enjoyed it and hope we’ll be back tomorrow,” Haley said. “I don’t know about the second half of the grid, but yeah, great. Nice to be on board.”
