Shane van Gisbergen claims Supercars scene is too judgemental compared to NASCAR
Shane van Gisbergen has been vocal about the issues in the sport even before coming to NASCAR.
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Justin Marks and Shane van Gisbergen (Via IMAGO)
Three-time Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen is set for a permanent NASCAR move in 2024. He has been assigned a devotement contract with Trackhouse Racing and will race in all three national series of NASCAR next year to land a full-time seat in 2025. If successful he will become the first New Zeeland-born driver to make it in NASCAR.
Ahead of the hyped move to the US, the Kiwi driver sat down for a podcast and gave some candid opinions about the sport. One of which was the sports scene, especially the media being too judgemental when it comes to mistakes and incidents. He highlighted that most often things from poor qualifying to his words into headlines in Supercars.
You get judged for everything. You qualify 12, it’s a headline. You say something and it becomes a headline on speedcafé or whatever.SVG said via the Gypsy Tales podcast.
He then went on to compare the same to NASCAR where there is a different mentality. He pointed out that since there are a lot of stories that come out every week, there is kind of a balance between the positive and negative angles compared to what is happening in Supercars.
It seems like a different mentality, you can say what you want and every week there’s so many stories that come out of a NASCAR weekend but it’s a mix of everything, good, bad.
How did Shane van Gisbergen get into NASCAR with just one race?
Gisbergen’s rise to fame and legendary status in Supercars took a lot of time and years of hard work, but his path to NASCAR was rather quick, thanks to the perfect opportunity he was able to find. He made his NASCAR debut driving the Project 91 car of Trackhouse Racing which is aimed at giving a competitive shot to racers from other series in NASCAR.
He was signed to race for the team in the Inaugural Chicago Street race, which also marked the street course debut of the sport. 99% of the Cup drivers didn’t have experience in racing in such circuits while SVG was a veteran of the style of racing. He used the superior experience to his advantage and won the race.
It created a lot of hype around him and Trackhouse gave him two more racing opportunities. A Road Course Cup race start at Indy and a Truck Series oval start. He produced solid runs when the opportunities were given and the team decided to reward him with a new deal for 2024 and beyond, with hopes of making him a successful NASCAR driver.
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Justin P Joy
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