Shane van Gisbergen is not having the kind of first full season in the NASCAR Cup that he had hoped for. In fact, it isn’t even close. The New Zealand driver’s struggles continued in Sunday’s Goodyear 400 at Darlington Raceway, as he finished 20th.
Advertisement
If there’s any type of positive to come out of Sunday’s mid-pack finish, it’s that it was van Gisbergen’s second-best finish — and best showing overall on an oval track — thus far this season. His only decent outcome this season was sixth place on the road course at Circuit of the Americas.
But the flip side of that is that van Gisbergen has still finished 20th or worse in seven of the first eight races this season, with five of those finishes lower than 30th.
“It’s not the best result, I guess, but for us and how it’s been going, we struggled a bit for balance but our long run speed was good and we were able to make some passes, so yeah, we’ll take 20th,” van Gisbergen told podcaster Nikolai P. Culp. “It’s something to build on.”
“It’s been one of the toughest starts in any type of racing I’ve ever had,” Gisbergen said. “We’ve just had one thing after another with our car failures or someone else’s crash, or I’ve just simply not been good enough.
“I feel like I can run with these guys, qualifying is still a struggle for me the way this car works, but my race pace is alright. I just keep getting caught up in stuff early on.”
And now, with next Sunday’s race at Bristol Motor Speedway — van Gisbergen’s first career Cup start on the high banks of the .533-mile oval — the odds of snapping out of his poor start thus far in 2025 aren’t looking overly optimistic.
Gisbergen enters the Bristol race, which marks the one-quarter mark of the 36-race NASCAR Cup season, a disappointing 33rd in the standings.
“Next week’s going to be really, really tough,” he said. “I’ve never been at Bristol in a Cup car and with limited practice, tracks like that are insane, how fast they run at.”
But van Gisbergen isn’t giving up on himself or NASCAR Cup racing,
“Yeah, it’ll come in time,” he concluded. “I just need time.”
