Dale Earnhardt Jr. airs it out on Shane van Gisbergen after putting bumper to Connor Zilisch: 'That was crummy'

The end of the Chicago street race in the NASCAR Xfinity Series had plenty of drama, just about everything the fans could have asked for. It pitted superstar road course racer Shane van Gisbergen against 18-year-old phenom Connor Zilisch.

But how the race played out in the final stretch wasn’t necessarily what most were envisioning. Paired on the front row in a late restart, van Gisbergen muscled up Zilisch and sent him out of the way.

Zilisch did his best to catch up after that, but it was over. Then came the tough reality.

“I walk up to Zilisch on pit road as SVG’s doing his burnout,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. said. “And I said, ‘Hey, man, he ran you pretty dirty there. I didn’t expect that from him.'”

Few did. Shane van Gisbergen is such a good road course racer he doesn’t typically get physical like that. He rarely needs to.

Earnhardt, talking about the finish to the NASCAR Xfinity Series race on the Dale Jr. Download this week, even relayed that he had been about to give Zilisch some advice over the team radio. That advice? It would have been not to worry about van Gisbergen pushing him around. That’s simply not who he is as a driver, Earnhardt explained.

“And Connor’s a better road racer than I was ever in my life,” Earnhardt said. “He’s an excellent road racer, no question. And I’m not sitting here thinking I need to give him advice on that, I was just wanting to let him know, ‘I don’t believe SVG’s the guy that’s going to put the bumper to you.’ Boy, I’m glad I didn’t say it, because he did.”

That left Earnhardt to pick up the pieces after the race. Of course, Shane van Gisbergen had been driving in the No. 9 for JR Motorsports. He and Zilisch were racing for the same team.

That created an awkward scenario for Earnhardt after the race. He explained.

“So I walked up to Connor after the race, I was like, ‘Man, I didn’t expect that. I think he should have treated you a little better there,'” Earnhardt said. “He basically said either hit the wall or lift coming out of 2. I expected SVG to do something differently than what he did.”

Why did Earnhardt think that about Shane van Gisbergen and why did he almost convey that to Zilisch? Well, during the first Chicago street race in 2023, Earnhardt said he was talking to friends who knew van Gisbergen from his days racing in Australia.

“(They’re) texting me going, ‘Hey, watch this’ because he was trying to pass for the lead,” Earnhardt said. “They’re going, ‘Watch this, he won’t put a bumper on the guy, because SVG is going to pass him without even touching him. Watch this.’ So it imprinted on my mind, man, there’s a code and an ethics to how they race in the V8 Supercars. It’s physical, but there also is like a respect level. You can pass a guy without pushing him to the corner.”

Something has changed, apparently. Shane van Gisbergen had no problem muscling up Zilisch on Saturday.

That left Earnhardt in the awkward position of trying to keep it real with both drivers after the race. Not an easy position to be in.

“You had two cars, you own them both, you’re going to go to victory lane,” Earnhardt said. “You’re going to high-five the sh*t out of SVG and say, ‘Hell yeah, brother, great win.’ But you’ve got to go up to the other guy and you can’t lie to him and say, ‘Boy, you got what you deserved there’ or ‘What SVG did there was all fair.’ You’ve got to go up to him and tell him what you really believe.

“And if I’m his car and I’m owning his car, I’m standing there wearing the owner’s hat for this car, I’ve got to go, ‘I didn’t expect him to run you into the wall over there, that was pretty crummy.’ Because that’s exactly what happened, and that’s exactly how I feel about this (Connor Zilisch) car. And then when I walked away from that car to the other (Shane van Gisbergen) car that’s in victory lane, I’m going to tell him the truth about how I feel about his car sitting in victory lane.”

Everyone likely learned a lesson from Saturday’s finish. Zilisch will now know he’s got to be on guard for everything. Earnhardt knows he’s got to keep himself on an even keel. Again, easier said than done.

“Man, I know that there’s owners that find themselves in those scenarios at the Cup level — Mr. Gibbs and Rick — but it’s not easy,” Earnhardt said.