Shane van Gisbergen's unique braking technique makes him the favorite at Sonoma

SONOMA, Calif. (AP) — Shane van Gisbergen proved in his NASCAR debut to be an elite road and street course racer by winning in his first career outing.

Two years later, his rivals have gotten a good look at the New Zealander's technique and have declared him the favorite to win Sunday at Sonoma Raceway. He will start from the pole for the second consecutive week and third time in five races.

“It's pretty awesome, we've had a really cool couple of weeks,” said the Trackhouse Racing driver. “It's so cool how stoked everyone is and you feel the energy in the shop when you walk in. It's just a cool atmosphere in the shop, everyone is lifted up.”

Van Gisbergen is on a two-race winning streak on the specialty courses following victories on the road course in Mexico City (where he won by 16.6 seconds from the pole) and last Sunday on the streets of Chicago (again from the pole). He has five consecutive finishes of seventh or higher dating back to Watkins Glen International last September.

“He's so good and it's rare that you see somebody stand out like that and distance himself from the competition,” said Kyle Larson, last year's winner at Sonoma. “He's way, way, way better than us at the road course stuff.”

The secret, his rivals have learned, is a toe-heel braking technique that none of them can master.

“If I tried to learn what he's doing, it would take me until I retire,” Kyle Busch said.

Added Larson: “You can't teach an old dog new tricks. There's zero chance I can learn how to do that.”

Van Gisbergen, who won at Sonoma in his Xfinity Series debut last year and started from the pole Saturday in that race, will be making his Cup debut Sunday on the picturesque track in Northern California's wine country.

He is beatable, said Denny Hamlin, but it won't be easy for any driver to stop van Gisbergen's dominance.

“I think you are going to need things to not go his way, and then someone is going to have to really hit it,” Hamlin said. “That, to me, is probably going to be challenging. Cautions could turn things upside down. He is beatable, on speed alone, but I would say outright pace? No.”

In addition to the way van Gisbergen brakes, Hamlin commended the way the Kiwi approaches the courses.

“His approach to how he attacks certain corners seems to be the thing where we're more reactive,” Hamlin said. “I'm more reactive to seeing how someone approaches a corner to go fast. He's proactive and knows how to approach it, so he's better and faster before I am. And by the time I start to get closer, he then refines his technique and goes even faster.”

Joey Logano had little to offer on his current feud with Ross Chastain. It heated up last week at Chicago when Chastain spun Logano in a retaliatory move that sent Logano to NASCAR to demand punishment for a deliberate action.

NASCAR did not penalize Chastain and the two drivers have not spoken since Sunday's postrace confrontation.

“We haven't talked,” Logano said Saturday. “It is what it is.”

Logano didn't want to talk about Chastain, anyway.

“He made his choices. I'm just going to go race my car,” Logano said.

As for Chastain? He maintained that “there's three sides to every story."

“I think that a lot of people were all running into each other for the last couple of laps,” Chastain said. “That's what I saw.”

Bubba Wallace tried to fix his frayed relationship with Alex Bowman as soon as they arrived in California earlier this week.

The two had an incident at Chicago for the second consecutive year and have had other run-ins in the past. After the latest dustup, Bowman expressed surprise that the two were still having issues.

“I thought we had squashed our beef, but clearly we have not," Bowman said in Chicago.

To prove to Bowman that they had indeed moved on, Wallace said he saw Bowman in a Napa Valley restaurant, approached him from behind and wrapped him in a bear hug. He later paid for Bowman's dinner.

“I told him I messed up like an idiot,” Wallace said of his driving at Chicago. “I apologized. I was down for a couple days about it. So I bought him a meal. It felt right.”

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Shane van Gisbergen, center, holds the trophy after winning a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at the Grant Park 165, Sunday, July 6, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

Shane van Gisbergen drives to Victory Lane after winning a NASCAR Cup Series auto race at the Grant Park 165, Sunday, July 6, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV is planning to travel to Spain this year, with stops in Madrid, Barcelona and the Canary Islands to fulfil Pope Francis’ wish of visiting a key migration entry point to Europe, a Spanish cardinal said Friday.

Cardinal José Cobo Cano, the archbishop of Madrid, announced plans for the trip were underway after meeting with a top official in the Vatican secretary of state to discuss the itinerary. While June had been rumored as the possible date, Cobo said the timing of the trip was still up in the air.

Word of the planned papal trip came a day after the Spanish government announced a landmark agreement, strongly supported by the Vatican, in which Spain's Catholic bishops agreed to let the state ombudsman have the final say in church-funded compensation for victims of clergy sexual abuse.

Spain had long lobbied for Francis to visit, but over 12 years he always declined. Francis preferred to travel to smaller countries, oftentimes far away, where Catholics were a minority.

Speaking to journalists after the meeting, Cobo said the current proposal calls for Leo to visit the capital, Madrid, and the city of Barcelona, where he would visit the Sagrada Familia basilica. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the death of the basilica architect Antoni Gaudí, who is on the path to possible beatification.

The plan calls for Leo to also visit the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off northwest Africa. The islands experience large numbers of migrant arrivals from West Africa. While Francis had long declined to visit the Spanish mainland, he had had hoped to visit the Canary Islands as part of his longstanding outreach to migrants and refugees.

Leo has echoed Francis' concern Friday, telling the Vatican's diplomatic corps in his annual foreign policy speech that migrants enjoy inalienable rights. He said he hoped that countries' efforts to crack down on human trafficking ""will not become a pretext for undermining the dignity of migrants and refugees."

The Spain trip would mark the first known travel plans for Leo in 2026. The American pope has said he wants to visit Africa this year, especially Algeria, which played an important role in the life of St. Augustine, the inspiration for Leo’s Augustinian religious order. Leo has also said he hopes to return to his beloved Peru, where he lived for two decades as a missionary, and to Argentina and Uruguay, which had unsuccessfully lobbied for a visit by the Argentine pope during his pontificate.

The announced trip came a day after the Spanish government said that the Spanish Catholic hierarchy had agreed to let the state ombudsman have the final say in compensating victims of clergy sexual abuse, a remarkable concession by the church.

Justice Minister Félix Bolaños, who led the talks with the Spanish bishops, credited the Vatican with having pushed for the deal despite the opposition of some Spanish bishops. Spanish abuse survivors had criticized the bishops' original in-house compensation proposal as lacking any oversight.

“I have the feeling that the Holy See has pushed for this, that the Spanish church has signed the agreement, but I also have the feeling that some bishops in Spain are not entirely enthusiastic about this agreement,” he said in an interview with Cadena Ser radio.

The deal is a remarkable concession by the Spanish church to allow the state to intervene in its internal handling of abuse claims. It is evidence of how the Spanish hierarchy has lost credibility over revelations of decades of abuse and cover-up by the hierarchy that were documented in 2023 by the ombudsman's office.

AP writer Joseph Wilson contributed from Barcelona.

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Pope Leo XIV waves faithfuls at the end of his weekly general audience in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Leo XIV meets faithfuls at the end of his weekly general audience in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)