Shane van Gisbergen continues to rewrite road course racing in NASCAR. Sunday saw him win his fifth-career Cup race and fourth of the season. SVG continues to prove he’s better than everyone else in the Cup Series when it comes to road racing. No matter the circumstances, he’s pretty unbeatable on a road course. He’s now won four straight road course races, but despite his butt kicking in the Go Bowling at the Glen, there might be a bigger issue than Shane just being the best at that form of racing.
Watkins Glen Proves Road Course Racing in Next Gen Is Near Unwatchable
It would be one thing if Sunday’s race played out like Friday’s Truck race and Saturday’s Xfinity Series race. They got really ugly at the end and had some very big crashes. Including the incident Austin Hill caused that included 16 cars involved in the crash. Sunday was far from all that carnage. It played out pretty normally, with only three cautions. Two of which were the stage breaks. I’m not saying Sunday needed all that carnage from the rest of the weekend. But most of the race saw arguably the best drivers in the sport struggle to make any moves on the track. This has been the common trend in the Next Gen at road and street courses.
SVG Breaks Makes History, Despite Snoozer of a Race
Like I said, I’m not taking away from the fact that SVG has become the goat of road course racing in NASCAR. He set an impressive record on Sunday, as he clinched his fourth victory of the season. That is the new NASCAR Cup Series rookie record. A mark that was held by Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson, who both won three races in their rookie seasons.
SVG is on a roll. 🎳 pic.twitter.com/rt4AAnwfQX
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) August 11, 2025
Then again, those two won on more than just road courses. It is what it is, but Shane has proven that he can wheel this car at every track with more than four turns. I suppose it would be a little more celebrated if the race itself on Sunday wasn’t a snooze fest. NASCAR has long had moments in racing where one driver dominated. Richard Petty, Dale Sr, Jeff Gordon, Darrell Waltrip, I could go on and on. SVG is putting on a clinic at the road courses; no one else has anything to say about it. That’s what made Sunday’s race hard to watch.
Ryan Blaney had a great car for the race after he beat van Gisbergen for the pole on Saturday. But despite that, he never had anything for the No.88 at the end of the day. SVG is going to continue to kick everyone’s butt because he can get the most out of his car, where others can’t.
NASCAR’s Best Have Awful Weekend
Kyle Larson had arguably the worst race of his career on Sunday. He had a brake issue not even five laps into the race, and had to take it behind the wall. From there, they fixed it, but he still finished 39th, 15 laps down. It has been miserable for the No. 5 car for a while now. He wasn’t alone, as other multi-time road course winners also had rough days.
Early trouble for the No. 5 as @KyleLarsonRacin reports brake issues. pic.twitter.com/QElLgoHVqj
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) August 10, 2025
The Cup field is full of drivers who have won at road courses. That includes four former Cup Champions, who haven’t had much success at all in recent years at the road courses. Start at the top. Chase Elliott, who is the active leader in road course wins with seven, hasn’t sniffed victory lane on a road course since 2021, the year before the Next Gen era started. Then you have Kyle Busch, who has four road course wins all-time. He has run good and had speed at these tracks, but doesn’t come away with the results he’s looking for in most cases. Then there is Joey Logano, who has one Cup road course win, and that came over a decade ago.
That brings me to the guy that most feared before SVG showed up. AJ Allmendinger. He used to be the driver you had to beat at road racing. But since Shane arrived in NASCAR. Allmendinger hasn’t even come close to winning. I’m not blaming SVG for that. I think the blame goes more to the next-gen car. It’s time and time again proven to be a pain and the butt, at the road courses.
Road courses like Watkins Glen have always been good for Elliott and Larson, but Sunday wasn’t a good weekend. Between Larson’s last-place finish and Elliott fading late to a 26th-place finish, snapping his Top 20 streak at 23 in a row. It wasn’t a good time to be a fan of those drivers.
Read Next: Dazzling Performance Sees Connor Zilisch Best SVG in Xfinity Series Race at Sonoma
Main Photo: Sean Gardner, Getty Images
Recording Date: 8/10/2025
