SVG STILL ALIVE
Reddick loses points lead for 1st time this year
Trackhouse racing driver Shane Van Gisbergen celebrates after winning the NASCAR Cup Series' Toyota Save Mart 350 at Sonoma raceway on Sunday in Sonoma, Calif.
Power steering failure at Sonoma resulted in a rare last-place finish for reddick, ending his season-long points lead.
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Shane van Gisbergen's Chase chances are alive.
Van Gisbergen held off Chase Briscoe in the final couple laps to win the Toyota Save Mart 350 NASCAR Cup Series race last Sunday at Sonoma Raceway.
He jumped back into the top 16 in the standings, 36 points ahead of the 17th-place cutoff.
Tyler Reddick left Sonoma without the points lead for the first time all year after a last-place run. Denny Hamlin's lead is a single point with eight races left in the regular season.
SVG's Chase chances
Van Gisbergen got the best of both strategies en route to another roadcourse victory at Sonoma.
He potted eight stage points with a pair of seventh-place finishes in the first two stages, then held off Chase Briscoe's last-gasp charge on the final turn to claim his second win of the season and eighth career victory.
Unfortunately for him, the next roadcourse race on the Cup Series schedule will be next season. He'll have to navigate two pack-racing events and three short-track races plus Chicagoland this weekend, as well as Indianapolis and New Hampshire.
Zilisch's best effort
Connor Zilisch had DNFs in four of his previous five races and had not recorded a top-10 yet in his rookie season until Sunday.
Zilisch put in his best Cup Series effort so far, riding in the top five for most of the day before finishing seventh.
Zilisch's rookie season was one of the top storylines coming into 2026, with expectations higher than usual for a 19-year-old with one season of NASCAR national series racing under his belt.
Those expectations are recalibrated now, especially with Trackhouse's overall struggles on ovals, but Sunday's running was a good moment for Zilisch and should give him confidence for the second half of the season.
Reddick drops down
Reddick's day was settled before it could really begin at Sonoma, as power-steering issues impacted the No. 45 Toyota from the early moments of Stage 1.
Reddick spent several laps during the first stage break with his hood up on pit road as his team diagnosed the issue. The No. 45 team could not fix the issue without spending several more laps behind the wall, so Reddick rode around for the rest of the race to a 36th-place finish, four laps down.
Hamlin grabbed the points lead, but only by one point after a spin and splitter damage resulted in a 26th-place finish.
The overall trend line for Reddick is OK, but he will have a real points battle with Hamlin for the rest of the summer.
Logano's streak over?
Joey Logano's eight-year postseason streak is nearing an end. The third-longest active postseason streak in the Cup Series behind Hamlin and Ryan Blaney will likely end in August, barring a complete reversal of Logano's recent form.
Logono finished 24th at Sonoma, another race where he did not factor into even the background of the battle for the win. He is now 20th in the standings, 31 points behind 16th-place Austin Cindric.
Logano's 20.7 average finish is midpack in the Cup Series, sandwiched between Ross Chastain and Riley Herbst.
Since leading 73 laps at Phoenix in March, Logano has registered just seven laps led. A third-place run at Martinsville later that month is the lone top-5 since the Daytona 500.
The Chase bubble is still a tangled group of drivers, but Logano is in danger of missing the Chase. Worse, few will be surprised if he does.
