CHICAGO — In the two short years since New Zealand’s Shane van Gisbergen burst onto the NASCAR scene with a stunning victory in his debut, the questions around stock car racing have shifted from “Who is this guy?” to “Is he NASCAR’s best road racer ever?”
Both questions are valid, given how quickly and decisively the driver known by his initials has established himself as the one to beat on non-ovals — especially in a parity-filled era for the NASCAR Cup Series in which every car has the same basic construction and parts.
“Has there been someone with this big of an advantage on road courses …? I don’t think so,” three-time Daytona winner Denny Hamlin said on his “Actions Detrimental” podcast on Monday. “You certainly would think SVG, relative to the field, has got a bigger gap than anybody in history.”
To Hamlin’s point: The analytics service NASCAR Insights noted this week van Gisbergen’s average running position on road and street courses this season is 3.34 — and the next closest is 10.09 (Christopher Bell).
Similarly, van Gisbergen won the pole position at Chicago last week by 0.47 seconds — a gap so significant, it was larger than the margin from second to eighth on the starting grid. He then won the race and is the heavy favorite again this Sunday when NASCAR visits another road course in Sonoma, Calif.
So how the heck is he doing this in an era of equal cars and the most talented overall group of road racers NASCAR has seen? Let’s take a look at some of the key factors.
An ideal background
NASCAR drivers are traditionally from an oval-racing background, which requires a much different skill set. In the broadest terms, oval racing is about putting a car right on the edge of spinning out while floating it through the corner and competing in close proximity to other drivers. Road-course racing is much more about hard-charging precision as the field gets spread out, which can feel more about racing against the track than the other drivers at times.
That has always opened the door for “road-course ringers” to enter NASCAR non-oval races and have a good showing, but few have ever adapted as quickly as van Gisbergen. Former Indianapolis 500 winner and seven-time Formula One race winner Juan Pablo Montoya, for example, came to NASCAR to compete full-time in the Cup Series for seven seasons and won two of his 14 road-course starts (14 percent); van Gisbergen’s win rate on those tracks is currently at 33 percent (three of nine), which has already made him the winningest foreign-born driver in NASCAR history.
Similarly, other open-wheel drivers like Montoya have been very respectable but not remarkable. In recent years, former F1 world champions Kimi Räikkönen and Jenson Button have made Cup starts on road courses; in five combined starts, they have a best finish of 18th (Button at Austin’s Circuit of the Americas in 2023).
Shane van Gisbergen also won the Cup Series race in Mexico City last month. In total, he has won three of his nine career road races in NASCAR’s top circuit. (Chris Graythen / Getty Images)
What gives van Gisbergen an edge, even over an F1 or IndyCar driver who enters a NASCAR road race, may be his background in Australia’s Supercars series. While those vehicles are touring cars and not stock cars, they are somewhat cousins of NASCAR’s current model Cup Series car (the “Next Gen” or “Gen 7” car).
Last year, van Gisbergen told The Athletic that while the Next Gen car is “way different” than a Supercar, “it’s still more relevant than most of the stock cars here,” which he said “drive like a forklift, where the rear end is doing the steering.” Except that type of driving is exactly what longtime NASCAR drivers are used to and more comfortable with — as opposed to the four-year-old Next Gen car, which shares characteristics with an IMSA sports car designed for road racing.
“The Cup car (now) is relative to pretty much every other race car in the world,” van Gisbergen said. “It just feels like a normal car. You’re like, ‘OK, I can push on and be comfortable with this, get a feel.’”
A unique technique
When van Gisbergen won the inaugural NASCAR Chicago Street Course race in 2023 in what was supposed to be a one-off start, the shocking victory captured the world’s attention. Over in Europe, van Gisbergen’s friend and sim racing teammate Max Verstappen — the four-time Formula One world champion — was up late watching and was “literally screaming in front of my monitor for him to win that,” according to The Race.
Verstappen called van Gisbergen “a crazy right-foot braker,” a reference to the so-called “heel-toe” footwork technique in which a driver uses the same foot to both hit the gas (on the far right, as in a street car) and the brake. But most race car drivers use their left foot to brake instead of placing it on the clutch pedal to help brake into the corners, as van Gisbergen and his Supercars colleagues in Australia do.
“It’s quite insane that he’s that fast with that technique,” Verstappen said. “… I mean, I can’t do it. But he grew up like that.”
Essentially, using heel-toe helps the car slow and turn more efficiently on a road course. After van Gisbergen’s 2023 victory, former NASCAR and open-wheel racer Max Papis posted on X that “NO (left foot) braker will ever be able to control rear stability on hot (tires) or slick damp track better than (right foot) plus clutch usage.”
Since then, NASCAR drivers have considered trying the heel-toe technique after van Gisbergen showed its effectiveness, but none have implemented it due to what is believed to be a steep learning curve.
“Everybody is just like, ‘Well, just learn what he does. Do what he does,’” 2023 NASCAR champion Ryan Blaney said last month on the “Door Bumper Clear” podcast. “I’m like, ‘It would take me 10 years to get halfway to what Shane can do with right-foot (braking). I might be done racing by the time I figure that out halfway of how good he is.”
Still, it’s unlikely heel-toe accounts for all of van Gisbergen’s road-racing speed, and it’s a bit of a cop-out to suggest that’s the reason he’s so good. In reality, van Gisbergen happens to just be an exceptionally adaptable driver, as evidenced by his ability to switch sides of the car and shift with different hands. After all, Supercars drivers sit on the right side of the car and shift with their left hand, the opposite of NASCAR cars.
Pump the brakes
All of that said, van Gisbergen poses no threat for the NASCAR championship — nor will he be winning a race on an oval anytime soon. His average finish is outside the top 25 on every type of NASCAR oval (superspeedway, intermediate and short track). And before winning on the Mexico City road course last month, van Gisbergen’s rookie season was off to a rough start; he was 33rd in the point standings in a series with 36 full-time drivers.
That underscores how difficult it is, even for someone of the 36-year-old van Gisbergen’s talent level, to compete with NASCAR’s best on the type of tracks most have driven since childhood. Aside from some dirt oval races, van Gisbergen had no pavement oval experience until Aug. 2023.
So why would his team, Trackhouse Racing, hire a full-time driver who currently can only win on one type of circuit? Because of NASCAR’s playoff structure.
NASCAR has a “win and in” championship system, where any driver with a victory in the first 26 races (the “regular season”) will qualify for the 16-driver field to compete for the Cup Series title. So even though van Gisbergen was 33rd before Mexico, he immediately leaped half of the drivers in the standings to lock himself into the playoffs.
And while van Gisbergen won’t win the title (there are nine ovals in the 10-race playoffs), NASCAR’s franchise-like “charter” payouts are determined by their average finish in the standings over a three-year period. So by qualifying into the playoffs, van Gisbergen essentially paid for Trackhouse’s investment in him — and he appears poised to be an annual playoff participant as long as the system remains the same.
At the same time, his road-course success is buying patience with Trackhouse for his oval development. Indeed, van Gisbergen has shown progress while getting three top-20 finishes in his last five oval starts after starting the season with only one top-20 in his first 10 ovals.
“We wouldn’t be doing this if we thought we could go win road courses and know we’re not going to run that good on the ovals because he’s never done it before,” Trackhouse owner Justin Marks said. “At this level of the game, you have to be a complete package. For his level of intelligence and how he studies and adapts and learns, there’s a real opportunity here for him to figure the ovals out and be a complete Cup driver.
“We’ve got somebody who is talented that we can make a Cup driver out of. And while he learns in the meantime, we can win a ton of road courses and punch that ticket to the playoffs and give our sponsors a ton of return for their investment.”
(Top photo of Shane van Gisbergen taking the checkered flag Sunday at the Chicago Street Race: James Gilbert / Getty Images)
