Saturday Circuit of the Americas Notebook

By Reid Spencer, NASCAR Wire Service

AUSTIN, Texas—Now that Connor Zilisch and Shane vas Gisbergen are full-fledged NASCAR Cup Series teammates at Trackhouse Racing, you can expect them to play nice when it comes to on-track competition.

Not that they haven’t done so in the past. Van Gisbergen, 36, a three-time Australian Supercars champion, has expressed respect and admiration for his 19-year-old teammate, who torched the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series with 10 victories last year.

Whenever the drivers compete on a road course, however, there’s the expectation that they will compete for the victory.

True to form, Zilisch won the pole in Friday’s qualifying for Saturday’s Focused Health 250 O’Reilly Auto Parts Series race, with Van Gisbergen a close second. The teammates were the only two drivers to navigate the 2.4-mile Circuit of the Americas road course under 98 seconds.

“I think, especially on Sunday (in Cup Series races), but tomorrow (Saturday) as well, the biggest thing that both of us know is that it’s important for the company to win,” Zilisch said. “I think that means that you don’t want to take risk of making a move that might end both of our days or whatever it may be.

“I think the biggest thing is that we both know at the end of the day that we can race for the win, and there’s no rule that we can’t race each other. But we’ve got to keep it in the back of our mind that, if we are racing for the win or the lead, it’s important to keep it cordial.”

Cordial or not, both Van Gisbergen and Zilisch will have to improve from lackluster qualifying efforts in Sunday’s DuraMAX Grand Prix Powered by Reladyne (3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

Van Gisbergen starts 13th, with Zilisch mired in 25th.

Road course ace AJ Allmendinger is running under the radar

Before Shane van Gisbergen and Connor Zilisch arrived on the NASCAR scene and began to assert their superiority on road courses, AJ Allmendinger’s name invariably was the first one mentioned when handicapping circuits with right- and left-hand turns.

But Allmendinger hasn’t won a road course race since 2023, when he triumphed at Circuit of the Americas in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and won at the Charlotte Roval in the Cup Series.

“The way we change that narrative is you go beat them, right?” Allmendinger said. “But for the most part, we didn’t do that at most of the road courses last year. It’s not frustrating to me. For me, the most frustrating thing was just, in general, we didn’t run great at the road courses last year.

“I put a lot of that on my shoulders. I think as Goodyear softens the tire, it gives the advantage to a guy like SVG (Van Gisbergen) that really knows how to save the tires. It’s something that, whether it was setup-based or my own doing, I struggled with it last year of trying to be good on long runs.”

Allmendinger conceded his own performance has to improve if he plans to return to Victory Lane.

“I don’t really put stock in how good SVG is, in that sense. Like for me, it would be different if I ran second every weekend to him on the road courses and you can’t beat him, then that kind of gets frustrating.

“But we weren’t even in that ballpark, so I think it’s more focusing on myself. You try to learn from them; study it, try to figure out what makes them so good and try to go out there and be better. That’s kind of what I focus on. The only thing I get frustrated with is myself.”

On Saturday, however, Allmendinger qualified seventh for Sunday’s DuraMAX Grand Prix, and Van Gisbergen was 13th fastest.

Has Carson Hocevar’s aggressive driving earned comparisons to Dale Earnhardt?

After the first two drafting-track races of the season, former drivers certainly had different takes on Carson Hocevar.

Richard Petty, Kyle Petty and Dale Earnhardt Jr. compared the driver of the No. 77 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet to early Dale Earnhardt Sr., whose aggressive driving style carried him to seven Cup Series championships and 76 victories in NASCAR’s premier division.

On the other hand, Kevin Harvick commented that, “The way I would approach it is I’d probably wreck him the first chance I got,” elaborating that other drivers who have been put in bad spots by Hocevar’s aggressiveness might teach him a lesson with their bumpers.

Hocevar was at or near the lead coming to the white flag at both Daytona and Atlanta before finishing 18th and fourth at the respective tracks. As a driver who has studied the accomplishments of competitors from earlier eras, he relished the comparisons with Earnhardt.

“I just go out and race and I enjoy it,” Hocevar said Saturday morning before practice and qualifying for Sunday’s DuraMAX Grand Prix at COTA (3:30 p.m. ET on FOX, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). “I take it as a massive compliment, you know, from Richard Petty, Kyle Petty, Dale Jr., all of them making comparisons. I’m appreciative of that.

“I would like to just have half the success any of those guys did. But I think we’re getting ready to get our cars in a really good spot to be able to be in position. I think we’ve been in position to win three of these races. I don’t know if this week we’ll show that, but I think we have really good tracks coming up that we can do that.

“But for me, I’m just going in the merch hauler and signing 77 diecasts. You know, that’s me. Maybe in 20-30 years, somebody’s hopefully making comparisons of myself to the next kid that was doing it and running good.”