CHICAGO – – When Shane van Gisbergen got the call from Justin Imprints, it reignited his advantage in the NASCAR Cup Series. He concentrated on the races, the drivers and the vehicles.
Turns out he is a very decent understudy.
Van Gisbergen won his Cup Series debut on a stormy Sunday in midtown Chicago, pursuing down Justin Haley and Pursue Elliott in an essential completion to the series’ most memorable road race.
In the wake of passing Elliott, van Gisbergen dueled with Haley in the last laps before the three-time Supercars champion moved in front for good. Haley hung on for second, and Elliott was third.
“The hustling, the fights were truly fun,” van Gisbergen said. ” Be that as it may, everybody was deferential and clean. It was fantastic.
The 34-year-old van Gisbergen, a New Zealand local, turned into the principal driver to win his Cup Series debut since Johnny Rutherford in the subsequent passing race at Daytona in 1963.
He had an opportunity to drive the No. 91 Chevrolet in Chicago as a component of Trackhouse Hustling’s Task 91. Marks owns Trackhouse, and the Project 91 program aims to offer international drivers a chance at NASCAR.
Marks stated, “This was an idea for a shower.” I mean it was me believing I’m a gigantic enthusiast of various sorts of motorsports and I’ve dashed in all kinds of sorts of motorsports. I needed to bring my affection worldwide motorsport to NASCAR.”
At the point when van Gisbergen was credited with driving Lap 25, it was the first lap drove for Task 91 in quite a while. He turned into the 6th driver brought into the world external the US to win a NASCAR Cup Series race, joining Marcos Ambrose, Mario Andretti, Juan Pablo Montoya, Duke Ross and Daniel Suárez.
“He will return home and let every one of his companions know how terrible we are,” Elliott broke. Van Gisbergen brought home his most memorable Supercars title in 2016 and added two additional the beyond two years. He was assisted in his NASCAR with appearing by Darian Grubb, who was the team boss for Tony Stewart when he came out on top for the Cup Series title in 2011.
Trackhouse Hustling likewise won last end of the week’s Cup Series race with Ross Chastain at Nashville Superspeedway.
“I was a major Tony Stewart fan, so working with Darian was exceptional,” van Gisbergen said.
Kyle Larson completed fourth in Chicago, trailed by Kyle Busch and Austin Cindric. Christopher Ringer won the two phases and drove a race-high 37 laps, yet blurred to eighteenth.
The race was planned for 100 laps and 220 miles, yet it was abbreviated in view of blurring daylight after the beginning was deferred for additional hour and a half due to a noteworthy precipitation that overflowed the course. The last 50% of the Xfinity race, set to continue after it was suspended Saturday as a result of lightning, was dropped.
Just before the planned beginning, as the downpour endured, shaft sitter Denny Hamlin took to Twitter to campaign for a postponement, and Noah Gragson posted video of one of his tires drifting on pit street. NASCAR then, at that point, chose to permit the drivers to get back to their haulers.
Steve O’Donnell’s NASCAR’s head working official, said they never intended to begin by then.
He stated, “What we wanted to do was get taken care of all the things that needed to happen to be able to fire the engines and get us going.” So that when we knew hello, the track is all set, you know we’re not going through the hymn and driver presentations and those kind of things.”
The weather conditions at last cleared up, yet there were puddles on the course when the race started. Indeed, even as it began to dry out – – and groups began breaking out their smooth tires – – water sprinkled wherever at whatever point a driver slid into a tire hindrance.
“Surely added a dynamic to the race that isn’t really extraordinary,” Elliott said. ” We’ve experienced that situation previously. Yet, it was adding that to a generally sort of new and different environment and different circuit was somewhat odd.”
Gragson, Busch and Joey Logano all visited the lines of tires thusly 6. Hamlin and Elliott got into the tire pack thus 2. Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was hit by Bubba Wallace and stalled out in the tire boundary thusly 1 late in the race.
There likewise was a huge accident on the 50th lap including 14 vehicles diverting on East Jackson Drive from Michigan Road, obstructing the course and definitely drawing a grin from customary Chicago drivers acquainted with the area.
“It was unquestionably an exceptional event. I clearly appreciated it and trust we return tomorrow,” Haley said. ” Let’s just get real for a moment, definitely, exceptionally cool. Glad to be involved.”
