AUSTIN, Texas — Shane van Gisbergen was so dominant on road courses last season, it didn’t seem unreasonable to consider the first such race on the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series schedule settled heading into this weekend: SVG in a runaway win in the Trackhouse Racing No. 97 Chevrolet.
Hold on. Tyler Reddick’s pursuit of Cup Series history may yet have a say in that.
Reddick earned pole position in the 23XI Racing No. 45 Toyota for Sunday’s race at Circuit of the Americas, putting him up front in the starting lineup on Austin’s permanent road course as he bids to become the first driver to win the first three races of any Cup Series regular season. A year after fellow Toyota driver Christopher Bell of Joe Gibbs Racing won the second through fourth races on the schedule, Reddick is going for a similar streak even earlier, having won the season-opening Daytona 500 before taking the checkered flag again last weekend at EchoPark Speedway near Atlanta.
Van Gisbergen won five of six road races last season on his way to becoming the 2025 Cup Series rookie of the year, and Sunday’s race has been teed up as a fight between the 36-year-old road wizard and former Supercars Championship star from New Zealand and his 19-year-old rookie teammate, Connor Zilisch.
Maybe it will turn out that way, but Van Gisbergen qualified 13th and Zilisch 25th, with Trackhouse’s most experience Cup Series driver, Ross Chastain, set to start second.
And then there’s the matter of the guy on the pole Sunday at Circuit of the Americas. Reddick has finished in the top 10 in all five of his Cup Series starts at this venue to date, with four of those in the top five, including the triple-overtime crashfest he won at COTA in 2023.
He also has the confidence of a driver who has no plans to surrender races to anyone right now as 23XI, which is co-owned by JGR driver Denny Hamlin and basketball legend Michael Jordan, keeps moving up in the NASCAR world. Reddick and teammate Bubba Wallace in the No. 23 Toyota currently 1-2 in the points standings.
“It helps the chances, certainly,” Reddick said of being on the pole. “Starting up front is huge.”
That prime spot was earned with speed over one lap (88.380 mph, with Chastain at 88.256), but beating van Gisbergen’s road course mastery over the 95 laps of a full race on the 2.4-mile layout is something else indeed. Sunday will be the debut of the new horsepower boost for road courses this season, and the bump from 670 to 750 is a change several drivers said should create more passing — and in theory, more chances for van Gisbergen to move up.
“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 is the betting favorite (+100) to win the race, according to BetMGM Sportsbook, and he’s also chasing his own piece of history. A sixth consecutive win on a road course would tie Jeff Gordon’s Cup Series record set from 1997 to 2000 and leave van Gisbergen two shy of the NASCAR Hall of Famer’s career record of nine.
As dominant as he was on road courses last season, van Gisbergen didn’t win at COTA, a track originally built for Formula 1, which utilizes a 3.4-mile layout for the annual United States Grand Prix. He had been expected to fight for the pole Saturday but was well off the pace at 87.748 mph.
And like his much older teammate, Zilisch 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. It was one of just a handful of starts he made last year on NASCAR’s top circuit, but now he’s set for a full season, and Sunday could be a chance to show his skills after finishing 33rd in the Daytona 500 and 30th last weekend on high-speed ovals.
“With Connor, it’s exciting,” van Gisbergen said. “A pretty cool talent coming into this level now, in the same equipment, it’s going to be good.”
Zilisch said he learned a lot from racing last year against van Gisbergen in the second-tier series currently sponsored by O’Reilly Auto Parts. Zilisch was second in the series standings at season’s end after winning 10 races, including four on road courses with the first of those at COTA.
Zilisch won pole position for Saturday’s O’Reilly Series race in Austin, with van Gisbergen starting second but winding up first in the end as both raced for JR Motorsports. Van Gisbergen led 31 of 65 laps and moved up five spaces to first on a late restart and stayed out front for good. Zilisch, who led 13 laps, finished 21st.
In another race on the second-tier series last year, Van Gisbergen won a head-to-head battle between the teammates on a street circuit in downtown Chicago, where 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 California’s Sonoma Raceway, a permanent road course.
“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.”
BK’s backup plan
Brad Keselowski plans to race again Sunday in the RFK Racing No. 6 Ford as he continues to recover after breaking his right leg in mid-December.
Although he missed the preseason Clash exhibition in early December, Keselowski finished both the Daytona 500 (placing fifth) and last weekend’s race at EchoPark Speedway (17th). The road course in Austin is a different physical strain, though, so the 2012 Cup Series champion will 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.”
Keselwoski, who turned 42 on Feb. 12, has held down a full-time ride on NASCAR’s top level since 2010 — he drove for Roger Penske’s team through the 2021 season — and has not missed a Cup Series start in that span.
However, he has just one victory since moving over to the team he co-owns with Jack Roush and John W. Henry’s Fenway Sports Group, winning the May 2024 race at South Carolina’s Darlington Raceway. Keselowski missed the playoffs last year, but he finished second in the season finale at Phoenix Raceway, his fifth runner-up showing since his most recent checkered flag.