AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Shane van Gisbergen was so dominant on road courses last season than many had looked at NASCAR's first road race of 2026 like it was already settled: SVG in a runaway.
Hold on. Tyler Reddick's pursuit of racing history may yet have a say in that.
Reddick earned pole position for Sunday's race at the Circuit of the Americas as the winner of the Daytona 500 and again last week at Atlanta looks to become the first driver to win the first three
races of the season.
Van Gisbergen won five of six road races last season, and Sunday’s race has been teed up as a fight between New Zealand's road wizard and his 19-year-old Trackhouse rookie teammate, Connor Zilisch.
But Reddick has history at COTA — he won a triple-overtime crash-fest here in 2023 — and has the confidence of a driver who has no plans to surrender races to anyone for now. His win here in 2023 was his first with Michael Jordan's 23XI Racing.
“It helps the chances certainly," Reddick said of Sunday's pole position. “Starting up front is huge.”
But that was earned with speed over one lap. Beating van Gisbergen's road course mastery over the 95 laps of a full race is something else indeed.
“I just need to get as much of a head start on him as I can and try to stay ahead of him all day,” Reddick said.
Van Gisbergen will start from 13th and he's chasing his own history. A sixth consecutive road course win would tie Jeff Gordon's record set from 1997 to 2000 and leave him two shy of Gordon’s career record of nine.
As dominant as he was on road courses last season, van Gisbergen didn't win at COTA, a racetrack originally built for Formula 1. He'd been expected to fight for pole but was well off the pace Saturday.
Zilisch will start 25th and still figures to contend for the victory despite a difficult qualifying session. He made an impressive and fiery Cup Series debut at COTA last year when he charged through the field in the second stage before a late wreck knocked him out.
“With Connor, it’s exciting. (He’s) a pretty cool talent coming into this level now, in the same equipment,” van Gisbergen said. “It’s going to be good.”
Zilisch said he learned a lot from racing last year against SVG in the second-tier O'Reilly series, where he won four road course races last season. Zilisch won pole position for Saturday's undercard race with van Gisbergen right next to him.
Van Gisbergen won a head-to-head battle between the drivers in the O’Reilly series in Chicago last year when he pushed Zilisch into the wall on the final restart. A week later, Zilisch got the best of SVG in another tussle to win at Sonoma.
“I feel like I’ve been able to run with him in those,” Zilisch said. “I feel like personally I can do it. But putting an entire race together, being consistent and not making mistakes ... I feel like I have the speed to do, it but I feel like I have to run a perfect race to be able to beat him. I think everybody’s realized how difficult that is.”
Brad Keselowski plans to race Sunday as he continues recovery from a broken right leg. He raced in Daytona and Atlanta, but the road course in Austin is a different physical strain. He’ll have sports-car ace Joey Hand available to step in if needed.
“It's going to take a lot for that to happen,” Keselowski said. “I'll have to be either really slow, or really in pain ... I'm a race car driver, that's what I do.”
Van Gisbergen is the betting favorite (+100) to win the race, according to BetMGM Sportsbook ... Sunday will be the debut of the new horsepower boost for road courses this season, a bump from 670 to 750, a change several drivers said should create more passing.
__
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
