Shane van Gisbergen won his second consecutive Xfinity Series race on Saturday, outlasting the field in the Zip Buy Now, Pay Later 250 at Sonoma Raceway — but not without a little bit of drama.
van Gisbergen passed Austin Hill going into Turn 2 off the final restart with 11 laps remaining to take the lead he would not relinquish. In order to execute the pass, van Gisbergen had to come on the inside of Hill while riding slightly in the grass. As a result, he made contact with Hill who did everything he could to leave van Gisbergen with no room. van Gisbergen won the race, while Hill finished P5.
In van Gisbergen’s mind, the two are now even. Hill cost him a shot at winning at COTA back in March, a race ultimately won by Kyle Larson.
“I hate racing and thinking like that, but to me, we’ve both taken a race win off each other now,” van Gisbergen said, via NASCAR.com. “I don’t know. Didn’t go into the corner planning to take him out. Like, I wasn’t going to hit him off the track, but I was gonna try to pass him and I did everything I could. And when he kept choosing left on restarts, I was like ‘oh, that’s surprising,’ because I chose the left on the first restart, and it was a mistake. And if I had the opportunity again, I would have chosen the right every time.
“So as soon as he chose the left, I knew, OK, this is a good opportunity to hang around the outside [of Turn 1] and force my way to the inside at Turn 2. And, like, I didn’t take him out properly, you know? I just made a hole and got through.”
Austin Hill on late contact with Shane van Gisbergen at Sonoma: ‘I plead the fifth’
As for Hill, he wanted no part of giving his true opinion, simply offering to “plead the fifth.”
“I didn’t really see the replay the best – blacked out – but, you know, I’m just going to leave it to the keyboard warriors on this one; I’ll let them figure out what happened,” Hill said. “I’m sure, no matter what comment I say, it’ll be wrong. … I don’t know… I plead the fifth; I’m not going to say anything about it. We’ll just go on to the next one. Good hard racing, the Bennett Chevrolet was as fast as Xfinity internet, we were holding off SVG there for a while.
“I had that caution, I knew it was going to be tough on the restart, and it didn’t work out, but we had a good points day, finished in the top five… Can’t ask for more than that.”
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