Nearing the tip of his first full-time season within the NASCAR Cup Sequence, three-time Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen has discovered quite a bit about oval racing.
At first of the 2025 Cup season, SVG had 5 finishes exterior the highest 30 within the first six oval races, however in current weeks, he earned his first oval stage factors and secured his first high ten on an oval within the Cup Sequence.
He presently sits twelfth within the championship standings, and the ultimate three races of the yr are all tracks he raced at earlier within the season (Talladega, Martinsville, Phoenix).Â
On X (previously Twitter), the New Zealander responded to a video highlighting how excessive he was operating across the monitor at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with simply inches between himself and the surface wall.
“Nonetheless one of many craziest components of oval racing to me,” stated van Gisbergen as he reacted to the clip. “Ship it in at 310kph/190mph, lacking apex on objective, heading to the wall hoping an imaginary grip strip/air pocket goes to avoid wasting you from hitting it, then listening to the exhaust echo on the wall because it holds you off it. Wild!”
Looking forward to Talladega and the tip of rookie season
Shane van Gisbergen, Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet; Brad Keselowski, RFK Racing Ford
Picture by: Chris Graythen – Getty Photographs
Nevertheless, this weekend’s race is a lot completely different than most different ovals on the schedule. Talladega is a high-speed drafting monitor, and the most important oval on the schedule. There is no such thing as a most well-liked line, and the sphere usually followers out three and 4 extensive throughout the whole discipline inside one to 2 seconds of one another.
“It is loopy and really completely different than a conventional oval,” stated SVG within the weekly workforce advance. “We’re doing 320 kilometers in a pack of 40 vehicles. It is wonderful how briskly we’re going, all squeezed collectively. Talladega is without doubt one of the most tough races that we do. Hopefully this weekend we will show that we’re getting higher at that (superspeedway racing) too and get an excellent end result.”
His finest Cup Sequence end at Talladega is fifteenth, which got here with Kaulig Racing final yr. Looking forward to the tracks that make up the remainder of his rookie season, he famous, “I just like the problem of all of them. I like how completely different all of them are. The intermediates, they give the impression of being the identical form on paper, however while you go there, all of them drive so in a different way. I actually just like the problem of discovering all of the little integrities on the monitor and what makes the vehicles work.”
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