Skill and experience have allowed Shane van Gisbergen to dominate in NASCAR’s top series.
At Watkins Glen, Shane van Gisbergen proved, once again, that he is almost literally miles ahead of the competition. He narrowly missed the chance to win from the pole again thanks to polesitter Ryan Blaney, who was possibly the only other driver who could challenge him all afternoon. Thanks to a strategy call that saw Blaney win Stage 2 (and 10 playoff points) while more or less sacrificing the race itself, SVG had no real challenger.
Watkins Glen is NASCAR’s longest-tenured road course at this point, so how is it that van Gisbergen manages to be so much faster than everyone?
For the answer, we have to go back to the fall Darlington race of 2023. That weekend, Denny Hamlin ran the Xfinity Series race, and won. The next week, on his podcast, Actions Detrimental, Hamlin stated that he had no plans to run any more Xfinity Series races. The whole intent of pulling double duty that weekend was to get more seat time and improve his skills at a notoriously difficult track. However, since the NextGen car is so different from the Xfinity car, Hamlin felt that he wasn’t picking up any useful skills or data that he could interpolate into the Cup car. True to his word, he hasn’t run any Xfinity Series races since.
NASCAR is notoriously strict about testing. Unless you get the call from Goodyear to test some new tires during the week, you only get your half hour of practice at the track on race weekend and sim time back home or at the race shop, which cannot compare to real-world seat time.
Your average NASCAR driver starts out young at a local short track in a Bandolero, Legends car, or Street Stock before moving up to a Late Model before eventually working their way through ARCA, Trucks, and Xfinity. Each of these cars drive somewhat similarly…until you get to the NextGen Cup car, which is more like an IMSA sports car than a traditional stock car.
Meanwhile, Shane van Gisbergen represents one of the all-time great Australian V8 Supercars drivers, with over 80 wins in a car that’s more similar to the NextGen car than a more traditional stock car. Even if a Cup veteran has driven every possible road course race in the NextGen era, they have about a quarter as many starts as SVG has wins in this style of car. That’s a sobering statistic for the rest of the field.
Combine this gap in experience with SVG’s skill and talent, and you have a surefire recipe for him to stomp the yard every time right turns get added into the mix. This week, however, the NASCAR Cup series returns to oval racing at Richmond – and now everyone is on equal footing once again.
Photo: Sean Gardner / Getty Images
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