Nearing the end of his first full-time season in the NASCAR Cup Series, three-time Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen has learned a lot about oval racing.
At the start of the 2025 Cup season, SVG had five finishes outside the top 30 in the first six oval races, but in recent weeks, he earned his first oval stage points and secured his first top ten on an oval in the Cup Series.
He currently sits 12th in the championship standings, and the final three races of the year are all tracks he raced at earlier in the season (Talladega, Martinsville, Phoenix).
On X (formerly Twitter), the New Zealander responded to a video highlighting how high he was running around the track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, with just inches between himself and the outside wall.
"Still one of the craziest parts of oval racing to me," said van Gisbergen as he reacted to the clip. "Send it in at 310kph/190mph, missing apex on purpose, heading to the wall hoping an imaginary grip strip/air pocket is going to save you from hitting it, then hearing the exhaust echo on the wall as it holds you off it. Wild!"
Looking ahead to Talladega and the end of rookie season
However, this weekend's race is so much different than most other ovals on the schedule. Talladega is a high-speed drafting track, and the biggest oval on the schedule. There is no preferred line, and the field often fans out three and four wide within the entire field within one to two seconds of each other.
"It's crazy and very different than a traditional oval," said SVG in the weekly team advance. "We are doing 320 kilometers in a pack of 40 cars. It's amazing how fast we are going, all squeezed together. Talladega is one of the most difficult races that we do. Hopefully this weekend we can prove that we are getting better at that (superspeedway racing) too and get a good result."
His best Cup Series finish at Talladega is 15th, which came with Kaulig Racing last year. Looking ahead to the tracks that make up the rest of his rookie season, he noted, "I like the challenge of all of them. I like how different they all are. The intermediates, they look the same shape on paper, but when you go there, they all drive so differently. I really like the challenge of finding all the little integrities on the track and what makes the cars work."
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