Shane van Gisbergen “Hasn’t Given up on Playoffs” Despite Poor Ovals Race Runs

Trackhouse Racing star driver Shane van Gisbergen shared his thoughts on finding himself close to playoff elimination, with Bristol race left in R-16.

Shane van Gisbergen “Hasn’t Given up on Playoffs” Despite Poor Ovals Race Runs

Shane van Gisbergen (Via IMAGO)

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The 2025 NASCAR Cup Series season marked an historic rookie performance from Shane van Gisbergen. He won four road course races and came into the playoffs with 22 bonus points to his name. But after the first two races of the R-16, it seems SVG’s fairy tale run is coming to an end as he is outside the cutline coming into the Bristol night race.

Trackhouse Racing failed to give their drivers solid cars for the Ovals, and the lack of experience meant he couldn’t outperform the car like his teammate Ross Chastain. Ahead of the race week, Shane van Gisbergen shared his thoughts on the tough situation he has found himself in and declared that they are getting better amidst the struggles.

I think it’s been awesome, yeah. To win the races we have, and show the improvement we have the past few months because we started well below average and steadily progressed, yeah…. We’re proud of that. We didn’t expect to set the world on fire on ovals but we’ve done a good job the last little while of getting me faster and better.

Shane van Gisbergen said via Motorsport.com.

Further talking about the point, the three times Australian Supercars champion SVG pointed out that he understands performing better in the Bristol race is an uphill battle for him, but he has positive expectations. He pointed out that the No:88 Chevy team hasn’t given up on the playoffs and going into the race with everything they have.

It’s going to be an uphill battle for sure. Yeah. I feel real positive about it and more positive than the first couple of months. We certainly haven’t given up on getting through and we’re going to have a proper crack at it.

Shane van Gisbergen added.

Shane van Gisbergen admits his mistakes in the last two playoff races

In a different conversation ahead of the weekend, SVG admitted that the reason for his poor standing in the playoff table has been the underwhelming runs owing to his mistakes in the last few weeks. He admitted that he has no one else but himself to blame for the disappointing results and he is ready to move on from it this week at Bristol.

Shane van Gisbergen
Shane van Gisbergen (Via @shanevg97/X)

I didn’t, uh, didn’t do very well last week. I had potential to do well, but yeah, I made a couple of errors myself and just put ourself in bad spots, you know, and made a mistake when we should have got stage points and we didn’t. So, uh, last week only myself to blame. So, beat myself up for a couple days and reset; try again tomorrow.

Shane van Gisbergen said.

The crew chief of Trackhouse Racing, Stephan Dooran, believes in the Kiwi racer to get them out of the trouble, as they have gotten better in oval racer every other weekend. If not for some unfortunate wrecks, he would have had better stats in the non-road course races.

I think since in the All Star race, our oval program has continued to get better. Even Iowa, we had a really good race going, gotten the fence, got the car fixed, and he drove back through the field to 16th with a kind of a dinged up race car, and then ended up getting wrecked again towards the end.

Stephan Dooran asserted.

The comments from the driver and crew chief shows they will be giving everything this Saturday night to get themselves over the line. If they are successful, he can easily make his way to the R-8, as R-12 features the ROVAL race, where he will arguably be the favorite.

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