Trackhouse is in trouble. Once a bright light on the NASCAR Cup scene, Justin Marks’ team has grabbed onto the coat tails of Shane van Gisbergen and is hanging on for dear life.
Van Gisbergen won again Sunday on Charlotte’s roval, his fifth straight win on a road or street course this season. A native New Zealander with a road racing background over there, van Gisbergen has crushed Cup competitors since signing with Marks this year – but only on road courses.
Kyle Larson, second to van Gisbergen Sunday, summed it up in July while speaking to SpeedCafe.com before the race at Sonoma. “He’s so good and it’s rare that you see somebody stand out and distance themselves from the competition as much as he is,” Larson said.
“He’s way, way better than us at the road course stuff,” Larson continued. “He’s got his own technique; well, not his own because the rest of the world does it the same way – right-foot braking, clutching and all that stuff.”
NASCAR drivers, Larson said, use a different method, braking with the left foot. “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” Larson continued. “Like there’s zero chance I can learn to do that and even if I did, like there’s zero chance that it would be better than what I’m doing left-foot braking.”
While van Gisbergen is a 700 pound gorilla on road courses, he has real problems running ovals, which make up the vast majority of NASCAR races. In large measure, that’s because he has no prior experience on ovals, but it may also be that Marks’ team has lost the handle on the NextGen car.
When the NextGen car was first introduced in 2022, Trackhouse was on top of it, running extremely well with Ross Chastain and Daniel Suarez as its drivers. Chastain was especially good, able to run with the best in the business.
That, though, was likely due to the fact that the car was new to everybody, and the elite teams – Gibbs, Hendrick and Penske – hadn’t had time to work on it.
Once they figured it out, the bright light that had been shining on Trackhouse began to flicker and dim, and now, except for van Gisbergen’s road race magic, there isn’t much to look at.
Using the OldGuySport competition index, which is much better than NASCAR’s point system at measuring how well a team is performing, we can see the decline.
In 2022 Chastain racked up 410 points and one win, fifth best in the competition index standings, and Suarez added 169 and another victory, giving Trackhouse 579 points.
In 2023 Chastain scored 385 points, again good for fifth place, with two wins and Suarez added just 57, giving Trackhouse a total of 442. And in 2024 Chastain dropped to 183, again with a win, while Suarez added 67, a total of 250 points.
And if you take van Gisbergen out of the equation, it’s getting worse this year. Going into Sunday’s race at Las Vegas, Chastain has 104 points and a win while Suarez, who is leaving the team after this season, has contributed just 43, giving Trackhouse a total of 147.
Marks’ hope is that van Gisbergen will pick up the pace on ovals, but given how poorly Chastain is running it’s obvious that Trackhouse has fallen behind on the car, and that combined with van Gisbergen’s inexperience is a double whammy.
And even if Trackhouse improves its setups, there’s no guarantee van Gisbergen will get better. As Larson noted, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” and van Gisbergen is already 36 and has not shown anything to indicate he is any farther along on ovals now than he was at the beginning of the season.
“It’s kind of interesting to look at our year because in many ways there are a lot of things we felt like we had to do a lot better with this race team and I was just talking about just getting more week-in, week-out speed, unloading with more speed every seven days,” Marks said according to NASCAR’s website.
“That’s been a theme inside the building, that we just have to get better. We have to understand these cars better. We have to unload better on Saturdays and qualify better and all of that,” Marks said.
“You kind of take the fact that we feel like we’re missing something and we have to grow and learn and get better,” Marks said. “This is the winningest season in the history of the company,” he continued.
“I lot of that has to do with incredible 88 team (van Gisbergen’s five road course wins). Shane is a world-class race car driver, but it’s not just Shane, it takes everybody.
“From the guys that are building suspension and brakes and putting these cars together in the shop to Stephen’s group (van Gisbergen’s crew chief Stephen Doran) that comes out here and executes on race weekend, it’s a very, very high level of professional execution,” Marks commented.
“That’s really what we try to do, make the most of every opportunity that we’ve got, and we did that a number of times this year, which is something that everybody in the company is just incredibly proud of,” Marks declared.
The problem is Marks sounds the whole operation is functioning at a high level when in fact that only place they’re doing well is on the road courses, and the only reason they’re doing well on the road courses is because of van Gisbergen.
So, maybe Trackhouse isn’t down and out – yet – but they’re definitely down, and the referee is starting the count.
PLAYOFF PICTURE
OldGuySport picks prior to the start of the playoffs: First eight out – Shane van Gisbergen, Josh Berry, Austin Dillon, Austin Cindric, Tyler Reddick, Joey Logano, Ross Chastain, Chase Elliott. Actual first eight out – van Gisbergen, Berry, Dillon, Cindric, Reddick, Chastain, Alex Bowman, Bubba Wallace. OGS record: 6-2, .750.
OGS picks prior to the start of the playoffs for final four out: Bowman, Kyle Larson, Christopher Bell, Wallace. Last four out to be determined in next three races.
NASCAR NOTES
Three most likely winners at Las Vegas: 1-Denny Hamlin, 2-Chase Briscoe, 3-Larson. First race winner at Las Vegas: Berry. Top five at Las Vegas in first race: 1-Berry, 2-Daniel Suarez, 3-Ryan Preece, 4-William Byron, 5-Chastain.
Last week’s OGS Charlotte roval picks: 1-van Gisbergen, 2-Bell, 3-Briscoe.
Charlotte roval winner: van Gisbergen. OGS record after 27 races, 12-14, .462 (no Pocono pick).
OGS competition index top 10 after 27 races: 1-Hamlin 600 points, 2-Briscoe 478, 3-Bell 443, 4-Larson 428, 5-Ryan Blaney 409, 6-van Gisbergen 368, 7-Byron 356, 8-Elliott 244, 9-Wallace 185, Logano 185.
OGS competition index top 10 on intermediate tracks (tracks most similar to Las Vegas) 1-Hamlin 369, 2-Briscoe 297, 3-Larson 238, 4-Blaney 220, 5-Byron 186, 6-Wallace 141, 7-Bell 107, 8-Elliott 103, 9-Chastain 102, 10-Logano 89.
