Shane van Gisbergen is currently tearing it up on NASCAR’s street and road courses but, at least right now, he couldn’t win a race on an oval if his racing life depended on it. And it does.
Welcome to the new NASCAR, where a 36-year-old New Zealander who knows next to nothing about running on an oval, the traditional foundation of the sport, can surge to the top of stock car racing by being better at turning left and right than any of his peers.
He is so good, in fact, that some are ready to crown him as NASCAR’s best ever even though he has only run four road races in his very brief NASCAR career (he did, however, win three of them).
Until recently, NASCAR has never been about road racing. And back in the day, it was even kind of looked down on by the drivers who, for the most part, came out of the rural South and engaged in the rough-and-tumble, get-out-of-my-way competition that got everything going.
There was only one road race, at Riverside, Calif, and it led into the Daytona 500 which, at that time, was not the first race of the season. When Riverside closed, in 1988, Sonoma and Watkins Glen were added to the schedule and until recently they were the only two road races NASCAR ran on a regular basis.
This year there are six, including two in a row, Chicago last week and Sonoma this Sunday. And van Gisbergen, who won Chicago, will be a heavy favorite to win at Sonoma. And he will be favored again at Watkins Glen, which is Aug. 10th.
But after that, van Gisbergen’s problems begin. If he wins at Sonoma and the Glen, he could head into the playoffs with four wins, all on road courses, and that does not bode well for his chances at a championship.
The 10-race playoff is an elimination derby, with 16 drivers competing. Three are eliminated after the first three races, three more after races four through six and three more after races seven through nine, leaving four eligible for the championship in the final race at Phoenix.
And nine of those races are on ovals. There is a race on the Charlotte Motor Speedway road course after the first elimination round, but van Gisbergen isn’t going to get that far because he simply isn’t comfortable enough running ovals to compete.
His two best oval finishes this year are a 14th at Charlotte (on the regular track) and an 18th at Michigan, and he wasn’t a factor in either race.
“That’s why I’m here, I guess (to win on road courses),” van Gisbergen said as reported by NASCAR.com after the Chicago race. “Justin (team owner Justin Marks) took a massive chance on me to bring me over (from New Zealand), and as I’ve said many times, these races are like a holiday to me. It’s the ovals where I’m really focused on getting better and better,” van Gisbergen added.
“I think it’s a unique project with Shane,” Marks commented after the race in Chicago, also on NASCAR.com. “I wouldn’t do this – we wouldn’t be doing this if we thought we could go win road courses and we know we’re not going to run that good on ovals because he’s never done it before,” Marks continued. “At this level of the game, you have to be a complete package.
“For his level of intelligence and how he studies and how he adapts and how he learns, there’s a real opportunity here for him to figure the ovals out and get fast at the ovals and be a complete Cup driver,” Marks said.
“I think we’ve seen him coming that way just in the last month and a half. He’s pretty consistently top 20 now on the ovals and when he started running he was kind of like 30th, 32nd and I think that development is just going to continue.
“I think when you think about the project, we’ve got somebody who’s talented and 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,” Marks declared.
At 36, van Gisbergen is much older then the normal driver who moves up to Cup, and maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks. Just not this year, though.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Sonoma: 1-Shane van Gisbergen, 2-Ty Gibbs, 3-Michael McDowell. Last year’s winner at Sonoma: Kyle Larson. Top five at Sonoma last year: 1- Larson, 2-McDowell, 3-Chris Buescher, 4-Chase Elliott, 5-Ross Chastain.
Last week’s Old Guy Sport competition index picks: 1-Christopher Bell, 2-van Gisbergen, 3-Elliott. Chicago winner: van Gisbergen. OGS season record: 7-7.
OGS competition index top 10 after 15 races: 1-Denny Hamlin 384 points, 2-Larson 301, 3-Bell 269, 4-William Byron 237, 5-Ryan Blaney 214, 6-Chase Briscoe 175, 7-van Gisbergen 149, 8-Gibbs 112, 9-Chastain 102, 10-Tyler Reddick 98.
OGS competition index top 10 on road courses (tracks similar to Sonoma): 1-van Gisbergen 149 points, 2-Bell 95, 3-Reddick 65, 4-Gibbs 51, 5-Elliott 50, 6-Byron 40, 7-Kyle Busch 38, 8-McDowell 27, 9-Hamlin 20, Alex Bowman 20.