The Trackhouse Racing driver restarted fifth in a green-white-chequered finish but couldn’t make headway from the outside of row three.
He finished seventh and was then promoted to sixth after 23XI Racing’s Bubba Wallace was given a post-race penalty for going below the yellow line and gaining an advantage.
Sixth place matched van Gisbergen’s best Atlanta result
“It’s awesome, but my brain is going crazy for what I could have done better,” van Gisbergen told Motorsport.com’s Matt Weaver post-race.
“I was beside the #12 (Ryan Blaney) coming off four coming to the white [flag]. Pretty fun. It’s awesome racing here.
“This is one of my better tracks for some reason and for some reason I’m always decent here – I’ll take it.”
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Asked what he could have done differently, van Gisbergen identified a few instances in which he could have been positioned for the finish.
“Definitely the restart. I thought I could have attached to the #45 (Tyler Reddick) better and he came up and gave me some advice after,” van Gisbergen explained.
“It’s just critical to do that and I just missed it, so we probably could have got a better restart.
“Then off [Turn] 2 on the last lap, (Christopher) Bell really came hard. I don’t know if I could have shot down below him or whatever. We touched a lot and that killed all my run.”
Despite the strong finish, van Gisbergen dropped one position in the drivers’ championship to 15th. Austin Cindric’s nine stage points put him one place ahead in 14th.
“I was thinking that on the green-white, there’s no one around me that I’m racing for points,” said van Gisbergen.
“Really needed to consolidate where I was. That didn’t change my approach but good to get a P6.”
The other positive to take away from Atlanta was the team’s qualifying performance.
To date, Trackhouse Racing has struggled to find one-lap pace. Teammate Ross Chastain led its efforts in the previous day’s qualifying with the ninth-fastest time while SVG was 12th.
“Normally we qualify in the thirties and race well here,” said van Gisbergen.
“It was a nice surprise to qualify 12th and Ross was ninth. Some improved speed at these kinds of tracks, which is definitely promising.”
The NASCAR Cup Series continues at North Wilkesboro Speedway on July 20 for the Window World 250.
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