Shane van Gisbergen assesses blame in Connor Zilisch wreck to Dale Earnhardt Jr.

One of the most eye-opening incidents on the track at any level of NASCAR last weekend occurred in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. Young phenom Connor Zilisch wiped out elite road course racer Shane van Gisbergen with about 15 laps to go.

In the wake of the wreck, everyone’s been trying to break down exactly what happened. After listening to van Gisbergen on the Dale Jr. Download, it seems pretty clear.

Van Gisbergen was driving very defensively and Zilisch made an aggressive move after a possible misjudgment. The two factors came together in a violent wreck as Zilisch attempted to get by van Gisbergen.

Questions about whether Shane van Gisbergen should have yielded more track to allow Zilisch to get back on abounded. He explained why that’s not his way of thinking.

“I had more time to reflect and that’s kind of, it’s where the racing is different here,” van Gisbergen said. “Every other racing series in the world if someone goes off the track, it’s their problem. They have to get back on safely. Whereas here you’re kind of, it’s on both of you to let the racing continue and give racing room.”

In the end, Shane van Gisbergen didn’t give Zilisch much room to operate. Zilisch responded by getting into him anyway, sending him spinning around.

Analysts, though, correctly pointed out that van Gisbergen was on older tires after staying out in Stage 2. Zilisch was going to catch him; it was just a matter of when. But van Gisbergen was going to defend until then.

“The other thing was he was catching me. He was way faster,” van Gisbergen said. “And I sort of thought to myself I’ll try and hold him off for three or four laps and maybe his tires will heat up following me and it will equal out. And it was about the end of the third or fourth lap of that pressure, and I was probably within a lap or two of letting him go but I was still fighting pretty hard.

“It was a good race. He was patient with me. Then, when he went around the outside, he went in way too deep and I knew I hadn’t cleared him, but I gave him just one car width to get back on the track and I was going to pinch him narrow into 7. I think he thought as well I was going to shade all the way back to the left. So it was just a misjudgment or racing incident, really, but catastrophic result.”

So who was to blame? Shane van Gisbergen had no problem answering that question directly.

“I was defending pretty hard,” he said. “And I went back to the middle of the road so then I’d know I’d pinch him and I’d get a good run on the front straight and I was going to clear him again. And yeah, he just misjudged coming back on. It was both our faults, really.”