Strategy gamble doesn’t pay dividends for van Gisbergen

Van Gisbergen qualified 25th but went to the rear of the field after the team made a carburettor change before the race. He quickly climbed through the field to finish Stage 1 in 20th.

All seemed well in the #97 who was relatively happy with his car before a set-up change shifted the balance markedly.

“F*** me, it will not turn,” van Gisbergen said over the radio early in Stage 2.

“It feels like a completely different race car.

“The front tyre is cooked already.

“I can’t turn it on the throttle because the right front is murdered.”

Van Gisbergen dropped back to 25th and called for another swing at the set-up to get his car firing off the turns better.

“I just have no grip man,” he lamented.

“We give up too much at the start. Every single car is sliding the rear through the corner. I cannot do that.”

With four laps to go in Stage 2, his Kaulig Racing teammate Josh Williams in the #11 suffered a right front puncture and speared into the left rear of the #26 of Ryan Truex and sent him spinning.

Asked for his input, van Gisbergen explained, “I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe it is on the splitter. For the first 10 laps, I just have no right front. It’s just tearing it to pieces.

“It just started tight the whole time then I’m killing the rears with the throttle. It just has no front at all. It looks like everyone is balancing looser and I’m doing the opposite no matter what I do.”

The team made a chassis and tyre pressure adjustment in the stage break. After finishing 16th in Stage 2, van Gisbergen restarted in 19th.

The Kiwi continued to complain that the set-up change hadn’t solved his understeer problem, preventing him from running the low line.

The only saving grace was the car being loose on entry, allowing the car to turn, before getting tight through the centre of the corner.

“It was definitely not the right way to go still,” he said of the set-up change.

“It just takes the rear out of the track. But it’s definitely worse apart from taking off better. I can take off but then it’s terrible. It has no rear grip anymore.”

His final pit stop on Lap 124 saw the team swap a packer and return the track bar to where it began. Still, the understeer issue persisted.

“This front tyre is completely gone. I don’t think it’s corded, it’s just cooked,” he said.

The team decided to gamble on strategy and save fuel to go to the end of the race.

A long-awaited caution never came and the team never got to use its one remaining set of new tyres.

As the front-runners pitted, van Gisbergen rose through the field to sit inside the top five but slowly began falling down the order as those cars on newer tyres came through.

In the end, van Gisbergen wound up 17th and the first car a lap down on race winner Austin Hill.

Results: NASCAR Xfinity Series Credit One Amex Credit Card 300, Homestead Miami Speedway