By Roy J. Akers- www.skyviewsports.net
With NASCAR starting off the season with two Superspeedway races and a road course, the non-drafting ovals will have to wait until Phoenix next week. Road course ringers did not show up at COTA, but several drivers are predicted to quickly run out front. Would the future HOF driver Kyle Busch come out on top or last year’s winner William Byron? Christopher Bell finished second in 2024, would he be there at the end? Let’s find out.
Stage One Highlights
Shane van Gisbergen leads nine laps. He leads Tyler Reddick and Kyle Busch. Strong road course driver Daniel Suarez is 4th. AJ Allmendinger is 7th. Rookie and a driver piloting his first race ever. Connor Zilisch is wrecked on the first lap. He improves to 34th by the end of the stage. About half of the drivers do not pit before the end of the stage. Bubba Wallace takes the stage. SVG and Tyler Reddick are the three drivers who led in Stage One. There were no competition cautions.
Stage Two
Only four drivers have led the COTA race through two stages with eight lead changes. Kyle Busch leads the first half of the stage and SVG the second half. The rookie Zilisch climbs to 14th and pressures Ross Chastain and Carson Hocevar. SVG gives up the lead with two to go to pit and Allmendinger and Ryan Preece lead to end the stage. Like in Stage One, Stage Two has an unlikely leader. briefly before pitting themselves. Kyle Larson loses his front right tire and drives on three until pitting and goes down two laps. It’s Preece, Ryan Blaney, and Michael McDowell 1-2-3. As the stage ended and the between-stage caution was thrown, there were now 11 lead changes. There have been no competition cautions for wrecks during the race. Chevy’s have taken the top five spots and six of the top 10.
Stage Three
Kyle Busch takes the lead from Michael McDowell (No.71) right after the green flag and Allmendinger and SVG push the 71 to 4th. Zilisch causes the first caution for cause going into the barrier after hitting Saurez who had suspension damage and had slowed. Suarez also collects a damaged car. Zilisch and Suarez are done for the day. Bowman goes to the pits with suspension problems and is caught in the pits. At the drop of the green flag with 41 laps to go, Allmendinger briefly takes the lead from Busch but slips to 6th being caught on the outside and it’s Busch, Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe. As drivers pit their machines with 30 to go, Busch, Bell, van Gisbergen all lead. SVG surrenders the lead as he pits with 22 to go. With Denny Hamlin causing a caution, several cleanup laps were called the the green flag was dropped with 13 to go.
Busch keeps the lead at the turn-one-hairpin turn. Byron went wide and slid back in the field and Bell was right on the bumper of Busch. With ten to go, it’s Busch, Bell, and Byron. Bell misses a turn with nine to go and Byron goes lockstep with Bell. Byron joins Bell and Busch with six to go. Bell goes in front, then Byron puts Busch in third. Busch said his car is used up and Reddick goes by him. In one lap, Busch goes from leading to fourth after leading 42 laps. Bell holds off Byron over the last several laps and wins back-to-back in Atlanta and now COTA. It’s his 11th Cup victory. The drivers raced clean down the stretch and showed it can be done. Busch on the Bell pass and late-race strategy. Kyle Busch, No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet- “No, that was it on pushing the car. We had a really good No. 8 Rebel Bourbon Chevy to be able to push that hard. I just wish that maybe we had equal tires to the No. 20 (Christopher Bell). I don’t know if that was all the difference. I know he was really fast and he had a good racecar. I feel like that might have been able to help hold me on a little bit better to him, but even that last yellow flag that we had, I felt like the gap that I had to the field, I was far enough out front that I could run the clean lines, the lines that I wanted, to preserve the tires and take care of them as much as I could to see if he could get there.” Busch finished 5th.
Final Standings < Click here
Shane van Gisbergen quickly runs out front
van Gisbergen won his very first start in Chicago, at a Grand Prix-style race and has had up-and-down success since then. SVG led 9 laps in Stage One and stayed in front of the surprising Kyle Busch. SVG took the Stage Two lead midway through the second stage, passing Kyle Busch who fell a scant one second behind the leader. SVG gives up the lead with two to go in the stage to pit and runs only the top six after the pit stop. He finally moved to second with 26 laps to go after drivers started pitting in the Top 5. He takes the lead with 25 laps to go, making him the only driver to lead all three stages at the 2025 COTA race. SVG pits with 22 to go and moves to eighth place. SVG’s car goes away on the restarts and he goes backward to 11th. He finishes 6th.
Christopher Bell
Bell runs well at Cota. He started off slowly during the first two stages but used pit strategy to move to second behind Busch early in the final stage. Bell closed the gap on Busch until he was less than a second behind Busch. It stayed that way until Busch pitted with under 30 laps to go. Bell takes the lead but needs to pit before the end of the race. He does that with 25 to go. Bell went back to eighth place but cruised through the field and settled in third place. Bell was excited to win. What was the difference this year in terms of getting it done and getting the victory today? “That was almost a deja vu of last year. I had the track position that time. Man, these road course races are just so much fun. Whenever Kyle (Busch) was leading, I was just trying to be so cautious. Obviously, we know what happened last year. I didn’t want that to happen. I wanted to pass him clean. He was just doing such a good job at running his race, and he could get off the corners just good enough that I couldn’t get inside of him. But there I started peeking a nose, and he bobbled and allowed me to get out front. Whenever I did, I’m, like, ‘Okay, just don’t beat yourself.”
Kyle Busch is heating up
Busch has had more downs than ups the last season and a few races in 2025. He won last week in the Craftsman Truck Series in Atlanta and ran through the field at COTA. He nearly led Stage One in Austin and then moved to the front with van Gisbergen riding on his tail. Busch has as much talent as anyone who has ever raced in the series and before the Slump of 2024, was a threat to win every week. Busch was pressured by Bell throughout the final stage. Bell and Busch have had several run-ins including at COTA in 2024. Busch inherits the S3 lead with 22 laps to go with Byron and Bell running 2-3. Busch finished 5th as his tires were spent.
He Said It… Connor Zilisch
Not the start of the race that you wanted or the end, but in the middle stages, you had a lot of speed. What are your takeaways from today?
“Yeah, we had a really fast No. 87 Red Bull Chevrolet. I’ve had so much fun preparing for this event. That second stage, driving from outside the top-30 to 14th, was a lot of fun. I was passing a lot of guys that I used to watch on TV growing up. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to come back and do this again. I had an absolute blast driving through the field, and I wish it didn’t end early.”
Where were they?
The last three winners of the COTA race, Tyler Reddick, William Byron, and Ross Chastain were not running up front. Reddick started on the pole and quickly slid back in the field. SVG was the bookmaker’s favorite in the race. Other COTA favorites Austin Cindric and Alex Bowman ran in the middle of the pack for most of the day. Byron closed the gap and ran second on the day.
Roy J. Akers writes NASCAR for www.skyviewsports.net
