Shane van Gisbergen has had a pretty underwhelming season in the NASCAR Cup Series thus far. On Sunday, he has a solid chance to turn this around. He will be tackling the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, a road course, in Mexico City. And road courses are where he is at his best, thanks to his stellar achievements in Australian Supercars.
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As is expected of him, van Gisbergen posted an impressive lap during the qualifying session and secured his second-ever pole position in the premier tier. He came 0.064 seconds ahead of RFK Racing’s Ryan Preece. However, he has some reservations about Goodyear’s tires and the surface at the track after the practice and qualifying sessions.
The issue was that the track was faster in the initial laps than in the final ones. This is an anomaly that has taken van Gisbergen by surprise. He said, “This rubber is weird. This tire, it hates itself, essentially.
“The track gets worse as you run and we tried some mock runs at the end of practice yesterday when the track was at its most rubbered-up and the car didn’t feel very good at all. That confused us and we didn’t really know where we were at.
“We saw all the fast times were at the start of the session. I felt really good in some parts of practice, but (with) new tires, we went a big backward step. I think we did a good job hitting the balance for the track conditions.”
All said, van Gisbergen is really glad to have secured the pole position, one that could prove to be a huge advantage on Sunday.
Shane van Gisbergen has revealed the “weird” find that played a pivotal part in securing pole position for the NASCAR Cup Series at Mexico City. #NASCARhttps://t.co/OYAZpxXfqi
— Speedcafe.com (@speedcafe) June 15, 2025
Van Gisbergen knows winning in Mexico won’t be easy
Van Gisbergen was involved in the heavy drama concerning logistics as well. He was part of the Trackhouse Racing crew that faced a time delay in getting to Mexico. Notably, the team’s engineers had arrived at the track just 20 minutes before the qualifying session. He expressed his happiness at being able to reward them with the pole position.
Starting up front offers a great chance for a driver to reach Victory Lane. But it doesn’t guarantee a win and van Gisbergen knows this. He said, “It won’t just be pole and lead all day, it’ll be action all day, the strategies, the way you have to flip the stages. The road course strategies are not simple.”
There will be plenty of work behind the scenes. Hopefully, this race will prove to be the much-needed turning point in SVG‘s maiden full-time season with Trackhouse Racing.
