Shane van Gisbergen tops road course ringers in Indy
Shane van Gisbergen earned another top-10 in the NASCAR Cup Series and beat all other road course ringers by double-digits Sunday at Indy.
The Chicago winner started eighth and was the only ringer to earn stage points as he placed ninth in stage one.
Kostecki qualified 11th but went to the rear of the field which put him behind from the start.
He made his way inside the top-15 but it didn’t last long. His team put him on an alternate strategy that had him pitting 16 laps later than van Gisbergen and others.
In the end, Shane van Gisbergen finished 10th while his Supercars competitor Brodie Kostecki finished 23rd.
Kostecki finished two spots ahead of 2009 F1 World Champion Jenson Button who had an eventful day.
Button started 31st then fell behind after a pass-through penalty early on in the 77-lap green-flag run.
Then, after squabbling with and get his payback on Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Button scrapped together a 28th-place finish.
Stenhouse wasn’t any ringer’s friend. After he regrouped from Button’s payback, Stenhouse locked up the brakes and spun Kamui Kobayashi in turn one.
Turn one wasn’t kind to Kobayashi as he locked up the brakes early on in the 77-lap run and slid off-course.
Kobayashi finished 33rd after starting 28th.
Mike Rockenfeller and Andy Lally weren’t immune from the contact. Rockenfeller bumped Lally off-course with six laps to go while racing for 25th.
Rockenfeller took the spot and improved to 24th at the finish while Lally finished 30th.
Rockenfeller and Lally will return to the NASCAR Cup Series next Sunday at Watkins Glen International.
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Jonathan Fjeld View All
Jonathan Fjeld is the co-owner of the The Racing Experts, LLC. He has been with TRE since 2010.
A Twin Valley, MN, native, Fjeld became a motorsports fan at just three years old (first race was the 2002 Pennsylvania 500). He worked as a contributor and writer for TRE from 2010-18. Since then, he has stepped up and covered 24 NASCAR race weekends and taken on a larger role with TRE. He became the co-owner and managing editor in 2023 and has guided the site to massive growth in that time.
Fjeld has covered a wide array of stories and moments over the years, including Kevin Harvick's final Cup Series season, the first NASCAR national series disqualification in over 50 years, Shane van Gisbergen's stunning win in Chicago and the first Cup Series race at Road America in 66 years – as well as up-and-coming drivers' stories and stories from inside the sport, like the tech it takes for Hendrick Motorsports to remain a top-tier team.
Currently, he resides in Albuquerque, N.M., where he works for KOB 4, an NBC station. He works as a digital producer and does on-air reports. He loves spending time with friends and family, playing and listening to music, exploring new places, being outdoors, reading books and writing among other activities. You can email him at fjeldjonathan@gmail.com