Shane van Gisbergen’s win at the Chicago Street Race came as a surprise for most in the NASCAR community. Following the conclusion of the race, drivers like Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson even pointed out how a non-NASCAR driver winning the race made them all look bad. Recently, fellow JGR driver and 23XI owner Denny Hamlin shared his insight regarding the HMS duo’s comments.
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He argued it was not a question of being embarrassed but rather, that with street courses, NASCAR drivers were the ones to have entered SVG’s style of racing.
Denny Hamlin has a different take on van Gisbergen winning in Chicago
While discussing the V8 Supercar champion’s win at Chicago, Denny Hamlin had a rather unique question as well as an explanation. His summation of Gisbergen winning differed from that of the previous comments made by Hamlin’s fellow drivers Elliott and Larson.
Hamlin asked, “All the Aussie crew members like, ‘I knew it I knew he would come over here and do well.’ An interesting question that got posed to me. Do you think, you know after Chase Elliott comments, Kyle Larson comments about, ‘Hey, he’s gonna go back and tell everyone how bad we suck.’ Does it taint it for you at all? A guy came in here one time and won.”
Later on, he added, “We came to his world, more than he came to his world. Does that make any sense? Like we were racing in his environment more than he was racing in our environment. Does that make any sense? Because street racing is a lot of what they do. Racing around these barriers, blind corners, the cars are similar… The tighter the track was, the faster he was versus the field.”
What did Kyle Larson and Chase Elliott say about SVG’s win at Chicago?
Previously, speaking about the Kiwi’s success in the first-ever street course race in NASCAR’s history, Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson commented, “It was cool to see, and I think when a guy like that can come in and kick your ass at your own game, it shows that we all have room to improve.”
His teammate and 2020 Cup Series champion Chase Elliott stated, “I don’t want to speak for everybody else, but he made me look bad, and I kind of think the rest of us, too. He’s going to go home and tell all of his friends how bad we are.”
Both drivers indicated that the spectacular win made them look like bad drivers. However, Hamlin argued that was simply not the case, since none of the drivers in NASCAR had ever raced in a street circuit-like format before.
Meanwhile, Gisbergen had plenty of experience with such types of tracks. Hence, it would not be Gisergen’s win making them look bad, but simply an extraordinary driver with prior experience in street courses winning it over drivers that only have oval, dirt, and road course experience.
