Shane van Gisbergen Handed a 30-Second Time Penalty at COTA; Loses 2nd Place Finish

Shane van Gisbergen was handed a big blow by NASCAR after he finished second in the Xfinity Series race at the Circuit of the Americas. The officials handed the Kiwi speedster a 30-second track limit penalty after the end of the race. So despite crossing the finish line second behind the winner, Kyle Larson, van Gisbergen, owing to the penalty, will finish 28th in the final standings.

SVG had the win pretty much in his bag, but a double-overtime run saw him lose his lead to Austin Hill. In a bid to regain his lead, during the final lap, van Gisbergen made contact with Hill’s car, and this allowed Larson to sneak past the two drivers who were fighting for the track position. The Kaulig Racing driver will have another shot at winning at the venue as he gears up for the Cup Series win.

Overtime chaos seemed to cost SVG his runner-up finish in COTA

Going into the first road course race of the season, Kaulig Racing driver Shane van Gisbergen was among the top contenders to bag the win at a 3.4-mile race track in Texas. For most of the race, the Kiwi speedster lived up to his billing and dominated the proceedings until the late caution and overtime came into play.

Not just once but twice, SVG had to hold off the late charge by the likes of Ty Gibbs and Austin Hill. But Larson played it smart as he sneaked the win right under SVG’s nose, who was battling with Hill. However, in his desperate attempts, van Gisbergen cut the corners on the final laps of the race, and thus he was stripped of his P2 finish.

A hefty 30-second penalty by NASCAR officials saw him stumble down to the 28th-place finish. Explaining what he would have liked from the race, SVG, while speaking to Frontstretch, said, “No green white checkers at the end. It was looking pretty good, and then the yellow came out, and I just try to manage, learn and I got better at them, but just got driven through.”

It wasn’t just Kaulig Camp that felt the penalty was unjustified; a lot of NASCAR fans were also not pleased with the ruling.

Fans react to Van Gisbergen dropping to 27th after the penalty

In a short period of time, SVG has managed to garner good support from the fans. Many of them were rooting for him to win but would have taken a second-place finish given his performance throughout the day. But NASCAR’s penalty made matters worse for the driver, and the fans were certainly not impressed by the decision.

One fan called out NASCAR for running his enjoyment of the race with their penalty for SVG; he wrote, “These races would be so much better if NASCAR would just install turtles instead of having to penalize so many drivers. Really takes away from the enjoyment of it”.

A fan from his homeland shared his views on the ruling: “What a waste of such a good race. One warning like they do in Supercars would be nice”.

Baffled by the thirty-second penalty, another fan added, “30 seconds for a small corner cut like that is too harsh in my book. 5 seconds or stop and go penalty on track sounds fairer”.

Read More: Kyle Larson Outplays Charging SVG & Austin Hill as He Claims HMS’ First Xfinity win at COTA

Coming up with a rather interesting point, a user was interested to know if NASCAR would hand SVG the same penalty had he won the race, “Think they would have penalized him if he had won the race?”

What are your thoughts regarding the penalty for van Gisbergen? Was it justified or too harsh for the driver?