By Luis Torres, Staff Writer/Photographer
One historic performance denied another historic effort.
Shane van Gisbergen was fighting for a record-tying sixth straight road course victory during Sunday’s DuraMAX Texas Grand Prix at Circuit of the Americas, the only NASCAR Cup Series road course that alludes the road course ace.
However, Tyler Reddick had other plans as he went on to secure a historic 3-for-3 start to the season, besting van Gisbergen in his own element as the latter began losing ground in the closing laps. It allowed the championship leader to pull away with a margin of victory of 3.944 seconds.
While Reddick became the first driver to win at COTA twice in the Cup Series, van Gisbergen ended up with his first top-five at the 2.4-mile road course.
In his words, a phrase that hasn’t been used casually to describe an afternoon until the Chase was re-introduced this off-season, it was a “great points day” for the No. 97 Trackhouse Racing program.
“It’s weird to be disappointed with second, but this series is just at a high level,” said van Gisbergen, leading two laps.
“I felt, okay, we got our SafetyCulture Chevy at lot better than yesterday, but just following Tyler, his driving was immaculate and his car was very good, too.”
“I tried, but didn’t quite have enough.”
"Just following Tyler, his driving was immaculate. His car was very good too."- SVG talks with @ReganSmith after a P.2 at COTA pic.twitter.com/Oxrd5YSVfL
— FOX: NASCAR (@NASCARONFOX) March 2, 2026
Part of the reason why van Gisbergen came up short of equaling Jeff Gordon’s road course winning streak record was a result of his No. 97 Chevrolet needing to be better across the board.
However, van Gisbergen gave credit to Reddick on having a superb afternoon.
“We lacked a little bit of turn and a little bit of drive,” van Gisbergen explained. “Tyler was just amazing. The way he was driving was really good and his car was good. We just didn’t quite have enough, but it was a great points day for this team, which is what we need for getting into the Chase.
“It was still an amazing result, but you’re always disappointed with second when the expectations are so high. But overall, it was a really good day.”
Reddick said after his third straight win in as many races that van Gisbergen is a racer who doesn’t make mistakes which made the victory sweeter because he beat the best in Austin.
“(I was) just trying to remember everything that I knew was going to be important there at the end and just tried to minimize the mistakes,” Reddick explained.
“This is what (Shane’s) so good at. He does not make mistakes. I certainly made a couple and just doing everything I could to just manage the gap and just stay away from him, if you know what I mean.
“If I let him get close enough, it was going to be probably hard to hold him off.”
With three races in the books, van Gisbergen will enter Phoenix Raceway (Sunday at 3:30 p.m. ET on FS1) fifth in the regular season standings, an improvement of 11 spots.
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