Dale Earnhardt Jr. reacts to Connor Zilisch, Shane van Gisbergen duel at Sonoma Raceway

Things are looking great for Dale Earnhardt Jr. once again this week. His drivers just finished 1-2 for the second race in a row. It doesn’t hurt to have Connor Zilisch and Shane van Gisbergen in your cars at a NASCAR road course race.

JR Motorsports had all five cars in the top-10 today at Sonoma. Just a fantastic overall performance from that entire organization. Of course, Zilisch and SVG were the cream of the crop.

After the race, Dale Earnhardt Jr. spoke with The CW on TV. He seemed very happy with how the race finished.

“Well, I just hope we ffinished one, two. And you know, it didn’t matter who it was that crossed the finish line first but you know, you gotta race hard and try to get the win,” Earnhardt said. “SVG wanted to win the race but he’s gotta take care of Connor at the same time. They’re gonna, you know, this is exactly what we saw last week and we saw, you know, a little bit of a different outcome. But we know that they’re going to more than likely be teammates racing into the future and beyond. And SVG came over to Victory Lane and they had a fun little back and forth about today’s result, and I think this is just kind of a look into the future of what we’re all going to be able to enjoy between those two at the road courses.”

Dale Earnhardt Jr. is always the first one to credit the team. He thanked more than just his JRM organization. After all, all five of his drivers were in the top-10 today.

“Yeah, just incredible. Bummy, LW, the whole entire organization. All our crew chiefs, tons of resources from Hendrick Motorsports, Chad Knaus, Jeff Gordon. Lot of support on the pit crew side from different areas. Justin Marks and Trackhouse. I mean, there’s a lot of allies that we have that are part of our performance and help us run well. We do a lot of things in-house, but we also rely on a ton of help from outside that really does directly affect our performance.

“So, we’ve really just kind of got everything in the right place, and it’s hard to do, and we might not be there for forever. Or for somebody will supplant us and it ebbs and flows in terms of performance in this series, we’ve been up and we’ve been down. Right now, we’re taking advantage of being on top or being one of the better teams, and hopefully we can sustain that all the way through the playoffs. And you know, win the championship. Be good when it matters.”

Last week, Shane van Gisbergen got the win. This time, it was Connor Zilisch. The battle these two are going to have at Watkins Glen will be appointment TV. Just wait until we get these two going head-to-head in the Cup Series. That’s four to six races of action between two elite talents.