In November last year, three-time Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen received a big surprise just as he finished his full-time rookie season in the Cup Series. Trackhouse Racing unveiled its 2026 driver lineup in a video posted on X. Each driver read a letter revealing their car number for the upcoming season in the video. For the New Zealander, the number he was given meant a great deal.
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The three-time Supercars champion’s new ride will be the No. 97. That’s a sentimental paean to his Supercars career and his father, Robert, who once raced with the same number. The announcement video also featured a voiceover from his dad.
Robert stated how proud Shane’s late mother would have been. This gesture from Trackhouse left SVG quite emotional. In his December conversation with Speedcafe, SVG reflected on the moment, elaborating on how much he cherished his team owner Justin Marks’s gesture, which honored not just him but his father as well.
“I think that Trackhouse video they put out summed it all up. It was amazing,” Van Gisbergen stated.
“Amazing when Justin texted me that a couple of months ago. Daniel Suarez was the first driver at Track House, and the 99 became his number. So, I think it was good to have a good refresh, and obviously, Connor was the #88 this year and Xfinity,” he continued.
“When Justin first mentioned it to me, and he sent me a text about it and sent a picture attached with the car in Red Bull and WeatherTech covers with the 97 on it, I was pretty speechless. He knows how much it means to me,” added SVG.
Van Gisbergen considers it meaningful hold that racing number as a privilege. He believes that people identify the legacy of a driver through their number. For example, fans think of No. 46 and immediately recall Valentino Rossi, No. 24 conjures up memories of Jeff Gordon, and in Australia, No. 88 brings up Jamie Whincup to mind.
Van Gisbergen hopes people will associate No. 97 with him, and he is more than happy to claim it as his identity, considering the family history involved. No. 97 has served as the 36-year-old’s family race number since he began racing, making it even more special for him to carry it forward from Supercars to NASCAR.
That said, in the early days of his Supercars career, SVG drove the No. 9 Ford BF Falcon for Stone Brothers Racing. From 2013 onward, he was assigned the No. 97 Holden VF Commodore. He wheeled that car for Tekno Autosports from 2013 to 2015, reaching as high as second in the driver standings during that stretch.
When he transferred to Triple Eight Race Engineering to drive their No. 97 Holden ZB Commodore, and later their Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 in 2023, Van Gisbergen won three championships (2016, 2021, and 2022). Across his eight-season stint with Triple Eight Race Engineering before departing for NASCAR, the SVG never finished below third position.
Much before that, his father helmed the No. 97 car during his sprint car racing career in the late 1990s. Robert was assigned the number simply because Roger Davis’ team was running cars numbered 96, 97, and 98, and he got to race one of them. Since SVG was following in his father’s footsteps, his car was painted identically during his first year in speedway racing and quarter midgets.
And SVG started with that number, and it happened to coincide with the year 1997 as well, making it work out symbolically as well. Now competing in NASCAR’s premier division, SVG carries that legacy forward, hoping American audiences will forge the same association between driver and digits that Australian fans internalized during his dominant run Down Under.
