The reigning NASCAR Cup Series road racing master, Trackhouse Racing’s Shane Van Gisbergen is reminded why he’s a world-class driver. Much of his early career was spent winning road races and championships in the Austalian SuperCars Series, and now as a fulltime driver in the NASCAR ranks, he has had to learn the art of winning on ovals.
The 36-year old New Zealander – in his second full season in the sport’s highest level – said last week’s DAYTONA 500 was an important step forward both in terms of his performance on the 2.5-mile Daytona track and his work overall to bringing his oval results more in line with his massive success every time the series goes to a road course.
Although he took a 30th place finish at Daytona in the No. 97 Trackhouse Chevrolet after being collected in a multi-car accident not of his own doing, he qualified an impressive 13th place and led three laps mid-way through the race. He ran among the top-10 for much of the early-going.
“I feel like every time I race on this style [of track] I get more comfortable at this stuff, it’s so different,’’ Van Gisbergen said Saturday at Atlanta, where he will 28th on Saturday. “Then you can be innocent and be involved in a crash like last week and not much you can do about that.
“It’s still a lot of fuel-saving, but even when the field went, I feel like we were genuinely fast and able to stay up there and I put myself in decent spots to get the pushes and not get hung-out. Definitely improved there. It was fun to run up front most of the race.
“It’s just time getting better and I think our cars are getting faster too and that helps. People see your name up there more often. It takes time for people to trust you at tracks like that, I feel like people are working with me more now. I feel like I’m getting better at that.
“I remember my first race at Talladega, every time I’d get in there, they’d put me three wide or four-wide and put me to the back. I feel like that’s happening less often now.”
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