By David Morgan, Associate Editor
CONCORD, N.C. – A clean sweep.
Shane van Gisbergen lived up to expectations Saturday at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, sweeping the pole positions for both the NASCAR Xfinity Series and NASCAR Cup Series races on the 2.28-mile, 17-turn road course.
Piloting his No. 13 Kaulig Racing Chevrolet around the course in one minute, 22.704 seconds, the New Zealander jumped to the top of the board, but would have to wait out the threat from Tyler Reddick, who made a run at the top spot, but ultimately fell short of the pole.
Reddick will join van Gisbergen on the front row as he looks to defend his points position inside the top-eight for Sunday’s elimination race.
“He’s obviously very quick to do those extra laps and still match it, but thanks to this Kaulig Racing team. Last minute deal to come and race here. Thanks to Matt and the guys for letting me come and run their car and of course for WeatherTech coming on board too,” said van Gisbergen.
“The Chevy’s really quick. What an amazing day. I’m at a loss for words.”
Along with third-place starter A.J. Allmendinger, Kaulig will have to bullets to go for the win on Sunday and play spoiler to keep the win out of the hands of one of the Playoff drivers. Allmendinger won this race a year ago and van Gisbergen has been a threat in each and every road course race he has run.
“We’ve just got to make sure we race clean. There’s a lot of Playoff guys around me that I have to race respectfully, but yeah, we’re here to win the race. I’ve got a teammate up there with me too, so obviously the team has done a great job. Hopefully we have a good day.”
Behind van Gisbergen, Reddick, and Allmendinger, Playoff drivers will make up the next four starting positions, including Joey Logano, Austin Cindric, Kyle Larson, and Chase Elliott.
Brad Keselowski and Bubba Wallace will start eighth and ninth as two more non-Playoff driver, with William Byron rounding out the top-10 as the only Playoff driver to have already punched his ticket to the next round.
The remainder of the Playoff drivers will start scattered throughout the rest of the field, led by Christopher Bell in 12th, Daniel Suarez in 13th, Ryan Blaney in 14th, Alex Bowman in 17th, Denny Hamlin in 18th and Chase Briscoe in 25th.
Safe and Sound in the Next Round
Of the 12 Playoff drivers, William Byron is the only one that can go into Sunday without a care in the world, having punched his ticket to the Round of 8 already based on the number of points he was able to accumulate through the first two races of the round at Kansas and Talladega.
Byron can instead roll into Sunday with one thing on his mind: winning.
“It’s great,” Byron said. “It’s awesome. It changes the whole mood and vibe for the weekend, for sure. I mean, I haven’t really thought a lot about it, in terms of just trying to do the normal preparation and be ready for the race and try to go win.
“But yeah, there aren’t consequences for us, so that’s a great feeling and I feel like it’s one that we can take advantage of. We don’t have to worry about going out here in practice; try to ease into it. We can just try to send it and see what happens.”
Byron added that clinching a spot in the next round early also gives his No. 24 Hendrick Motorsports team the chance to prepare in advance for the Round of 8 races, starting with next weekend’s event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway as they look to make another run at the championship race in Phoenix at season’s end.
“It just allows us to get started on Las Vegas. We’ve already looked at tape; reviewed our setup and started to get an idea of what we need for Vegas,” Byron explained.
“We were good there in the spring, until we had the trash bag on the grill. Honestly if we can just go there with similar speed, and similar speed to what we had at Kansas, I think we’ll be right there in the mix. Last year was a bit disappointing in Vegas. We weren’t as good as we thought we would be, even though we had a few weeks to prepare. So, I think we’ll probably do some things a little bit differently this time around. But we already have a good head start on it.
“It’s been two years in a row that we’ve been able to kind of cruise through this Round of 12, and that’s been really nice for our team to think ahead a little bit. But we still want to win this weekend. We still put effort into the ROVAL setup and try to go out here and be good tomorrow.”
Chaos Guaranteed
Changes to the Charlotte ROVAL layout for this year’s race have drivers on edge, with all of them expecting chaos to reign supreme on Sunday.
The biggest point of contention is the new Turn 7, which has been transformed into a left-handed hairpin turn before heading onto the banks of the Charlotte oval. Given the new layout, it’s expected to be a major chokepoint throughout the race.
“It will certainly be different for sure,” said Denny Hamlin. “As time goes on, everyone is going to adapt their style to a very similar style, as we do on most tracks.
“It is inviting to go in there and dive bomb, and that will get rewarded sometimes, and sometimes it won’t. It is the same track for everyone, someone is going to win, so you just hope you are it.”
The frontstretch chicane also underwent changes ahead of the weekend, making the final set of corners tighter and more unforgiving. Some of which Kyle Busch has questioned why they needed to be made at all.
“It’s a dive bomb spot, so I would imagine that there would be some of that, some contact over there for sure,” Busch said of the new Turn 7. “And seems like if you just kind of roll the outside as the outside guy, you can probably clear the inside guy ’cause he’s got pinch it so tight, so I don’t even know if it’s a passing zone.”
Busch added that the changes to the frontstretch were puzzling to him, given how tricky that set of corners already was with incidents there from the debut of the track back in 2018.
“I don’t know why we changed the frontstretch. The frontstretch was fine,” Busch said.
“To make it tighter, I don’t understand the reasoning behind making it tighter. Just to make us slower through there so we don’t get into turn one as fast. I don’t really know, but the turtles over there, the sharper corner, if you don’t ramp ’em, you, you miss the exit, you miss the second set of ’em. So, you have to ramp ’em just to give your shot, give yourself a shot to be able to miss the exit ones.”
He also noted that the way driver have to attack the frontstretch chicane will have drivers in a world of hurt by the end of the weekend given how they ramp off of them to maximize their line through there.
“I don’t know when I’ll see the data. Probably not till Monday, but my head hurts,” Busch said.
Dad Duties
Chase Briscoe comes into Charlotte at the bottom of the Playoff standings, needing to make up a 32-point gap to make it into the next round of the Playoffs, which puts him in must-win territory on Sunday to keep his Cinderella story Playoff run alive.
However, the driver of the No. 14 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford celebrated the birth of his twins, Cooper and Collins, turning his family of three into a family of five. With his new additions, Briscoe explained that he hasn’t had a lot of time to devote himself to the race car and this weekend’s race, but instead has been focusing on his family and making sure everything is good on the home front.
“It’s been a chaotic week,” Briscoe said. “Marissa’s actually at the ER right now. So yeah, she’s been twice. She’s had a lot of issues after. So hopefully I can get done quick here and get back home. The babies are good. They’re super small. I did not expect them to be as small as they are.
“But yeah, I’m definitely not getting a lot of sleep. Trying to be the best dad and play mom at the same time just with how bad Marissa has been struggling. It’s been a busy week.
“I probably haven’t focused a whole lot on racing, truthfully, but I’m excited to get the car today just from that standpoint of trying to zone everything that I’ve had going on all week. I feel feel good about it. Being a father of three has been really cool. It has been cool to see Brooks transition into the big brother role already and just hoping that Marissa will be okay and get back to her.”
Briscoe added that he thankfully has had the support of family to keep things from being any more chaotic than they already are, helping him manage everything going on off-track.
“It’s chaotic, but without that support system and without that family support, it would be way harder. That being said, as chaotic of a week as it’s been, it could be a lot worse, right? There’s a lot worse things that we could be going through, and it could be a lot harder for us. We’ve got it pretty good still. I think just my faith and then having that support system definitely makes it a little bit easier to just not get lost in the chaos.”
He also noted that advancing on in the Playoffs would be great, especially with SHR closing its doors at season’s end, but sometimes there are bigger things in life than what happens in a race car.
“What I do in the race car is important, but in the big scheme of things, in the big scheme of life, it’s not the most important thing where I finish on a Sunday,” Briscoe said.
“I think it does add motivation at the same time, just knowing that you have two more mouths to feed and things like that. And you want to provide for your family, but also, my worth is not where I finish on Sunday whether I move on in the Playoffs. It’s how good of a husband I am and a father I am. And that’s kind of what I try to take pride in.”
Hurricane Relief
Ahead of the race weekend at Charlotte, Joey Logano made the trek to Western North Carolina to evaluate the situation in that part of the state after the passing of Hurricane Helene blew through the area and caused widespread damage in late September.
Logano explained that what he witnessed was almost unimaginable and left him wanting to help provide what he and his Joey Logano Foundation can to help get those affected the most back on their feet in the coming weeks, months, and years.
“It was worse than I thought it was going to be,” Logano said. “And everyone’s perspectives different before they get there, but I don’t feel like the news really shows seeing it first-hand. And it’s not against the news. It’s just, I don’t know if they can actually cover the amount of devastation that’s actually there and the families.
“Talking to some of ’em, the problems and things, hurdles they’re gonna have to cross to live is in some of the most sad scenarios you can ever dream of. Losing your family members, cleaning up, trying to find bodies, trying to figure out if you have any value in your home at all. If you can get any money out of it. Burial costs, I mean it stacks up.”
In all of the devastation, Logano noted that there were some positives in that everyone put their differences aside and all teamed up to help their fellow neighbor.
“The one positive that I saw, there was an amazing amount of people who could help. Churches were full of people bringing supplies. Some people just had tents set up on the side of the road, just I got water and clothes and here you go. No questions asked, right? That’s the one positive I saw
“It’s just that everyone puts their differences politically, financially, whatever it is, they put ’em to the side and they decide to help. And I thought that was the coolest part, but also the most sad thing to see, just disaster.”
Logano added now that he has been able to get a true picture of how things are going there, he and his team can formulate a game plan to help out in the best way possible.
“We’re exploring a lot of different things after yesterday, which is totally worth doing up there, so we make a huge impact,” Logano said. “Honestly, I wanted to be at the church loading people’s cars up, like I wanted to do that.
“But the biggest impact I can make is trying to figure out where we can place hundreds of thousands of dollars to help people move, millions of dollars to help people. Roofs are maybe the biggest thing. Putting roofs over heads, vehicles is another thing. And just straight up money, as simple as that one sounds. Some people are just gonna be hurting ’cause their life savings went down a hill.”
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