Most drivers would call it a successful campaign if they win one-sixth of the 36 races in a NASCAR Cup season. It’s a championship-worthy season, as a matter of fact. Well, it is a ‘yes’ and a ‘no’ for Shane van Gisbergen, who earned his fifth road course win of the year on Sunday at the Charlotte Roval.
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However, the victory came in a losing cause in a sense. SVG was eliminated from the Cup playoffs three races ago after the Round of 16. The best van Gisbergen can hope to finish this season is 13th.
Meanwhile, the New Zealand driver is slowly but surely improving on ovals, too. Those tracks make up the lion’s share of the Cup schedule. We can only imagine how it would be once the former three-time Australian V8 Supercars champion fully gets the hang of ovals.
SVG has definitely shown improvement on the ovals this year compared to last season. Van Gisbergen is going to become “very dangerous,” said his boss, Trackhouse owner Justin Marks, after his win at Charlotte on Sunday.
“I think it’s still just time,” SVG said of what he still needs during his post-race press conference. “I feel like every race weekend I’m learning something. Even on a road course.”
Van Gisbergen was a spoiler on Sunday, helping to knock four drivers out of contention for entry into the Round of 8, which begins next Sunday in Las Vegas. SVG is hoping he can continue in the same trajectory in the final four races of the season, while also getting better on all four ovals (Las Vegas, Talladega, Martinsville, and the season finale at Phoenix).
“These next few weeks are a contrast of tracks,” van Gisbergen added. “All three tracks [in the Round of Eight, but that can be extrapolated to include the one-mile flat track at Phoenix] are very different from each other.
“That’s the hard part where you’ve got to transition from the mile-and-a-half [Las Vegas] to the short track [Martinsville] or superspeedway [Talladega]. It’s going to be a pretty crazy finish to the year. But, yeah, I need to be better at all disciplines of what NASCAR Cup racing is. That will help us do better in the playoffs next year,” elaborated van Gisbergen.
SVG is already planning for next year’s playoffs
You have to like that kind of confidence, where SVG is already predicting he’ll make the playoffs again in 2026. “Yeah, I really think we are getting a lot better, but we needed to execute, and we didn’t in the playoffs,” he said.
And while the Trackhouse Racing driver still has a way to go, he’s confident that he will continue to get better with each Cup race he competes in.
“I think my learning curve is still pretty steep,” admitted van Gisbergen. “I feel like, as a driver, I’m getting more comfortable and understanding the car dynamics, the setup every week. I feel like I’m always learning. So, yeah, as long as that doesn’t stop, I’ll keep getting better.”
And then maybe his initials may have to be switched from SVG to SVD: ‘Shane’s Very Dangerous.’
