In the midst of his debut Cup Series season, van Gisbergen has won four of the five non-oval races at Mexico City, Chicago, Sonoma, and Watkins Glen. One remains this year at the Charlotte ROVAL during the Round of 12 Playoffs.

At first, van Gisbergen was praised for his fancy footwork. Then the discussion turned to, ‘how do we stop him?’ Now, there are calls for NASCAR to reduce the number of road course races.

What a difference two years makes.

Fundamentally, the supporting argument for van Gisbergen is this — don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Trackhouse Racing boss Justin Marks saw the potential in van Gisbergen, and as the road course schedule grew it bettered the odds of success with the ‘win and you’re in’ format.

Van Gisbergen has even admitted that it was the express intent of getting him into a full-time Cup Series ride — win on road courses, book a Playoffs spot, and bag a bunch of cash along the way.

Tall poppy syndrome is a term thrown around lackadaisically, especially in New Zealand sport, but it’s no more pertinent than right now for SVG, albeit Stateside.

“The interesting debate is [Clint] Bowyer (NASCAR driver turned commentator) texted me and he said ‘I don’t know if I like this’,” said NASCAR legend Kevin Harvick on The Happy Hour.

“It’s a debate within the whole NASCAR world with him (van Gisbergen) coming in here and winning all the road course races and having a road course ringer, which is exactly what Justin Marks set out to do.”

A couple notes on Shane van Gisbergen’s win at Watkins Glen:

– SVG has the two largest margins of victory in the NextGen era (Mexico City – 16.567 sec & Watkins Glen – 11.116 sec)
– Second driver with multiple wins over 10 seconds in a single season since 2000 (Truex Jr – 2018) pic.twitter.com/FRoymupzaU

— NASCAR Insights (@NASCARInsights) August 11, 2025

Harvick said the optics are maligned because of the frequency of road courses. The four-race swing across  Mexico City, Chicago, Sonoma and Watkins Glen were held over a nine-race span. In fact, Chicago and Sonoma were back-to-back.

“They’re all clumped together, [which] is why they’re mad, and they’ve had to see it so many times over the last month or two months,” said Harvick of the public backlash.

Harvick said any view towards reducing the volume of road course races simply because van Gisbergen is so dominant would be shortsighted.

“It’s crazy that it’s hated instead of celebrated,” he added.

“Why don’t we celebrate greatness? This has been a constant conversation throughout the years when someone dominates. Why don’t we celebrate it? Why do we want to make our guys that are great, why do we want to knock them down?

“I’ll never forget the conversation that I had, sitting in the trailer at Charlotte. It was myself, Martin Truex, and Kyle Busch. NASCAR says, ‘yep, we’re going away from these rules. You guys are winning too many races so we’re going to mix it up’.

“That’s where we got the 550 [horsepower] package. I’m not with them. I don’t understand why we don’t celebrate greatness, why we don’t wrap our arms around when someone is doing something great instead of trying to gripe and complain about it.

“That’s why we’re not developing as many heroes like we used to.”

Daytona 500 winner Denny Hamlin, who currently drives for Joe Gibbs Racing in the #11 Toyota Camry, said van Gisbergen is the best road course racer he’s competed against.

However, he worries that fans will become disillusioned by van Gisbergen’s dominance and said he is so dialled in that the only way to stop him is if something “wacky” happens.

“For SVG to lose a road course race… it is going to have to take an untimely caution that completely screws him out of his track position,” said Hamlin on his podcast Actions Detrimental.

“I don’t know how much he’s got in reserve, but it seems like a lot. It just compounds when you put him out front and what the leader can do to the rest of the field, it’s insurmountable.

“I think there’s a certain element where fans will get fatigued with it but we do have to appreciate the greatness that we’re seeing on this type of race track,” he added.

“It’s something to be admired and certainly exposes the rest of the field to show that there’s more left there.”

NextGen’s shortcomings

Van Gisbergen’s dominance comes at a time when there is a lot of criticism around the NextGen Cup Series car, which bears some similarities to the Gen2 and Gen3 machines in Supercars.

Whether it’s the technical strengths and weaknesses of the car, van Gisbergen’s innate ability to perform on road courses – fancy footwork or otherwise – in any case, he is putting his rivals to shame and resetting records along the way.

One thing that Hamlin and fellow NASCAR veteran Dale Earnhardt Jr. agree on is that the NextGen car has its flaws.

“He’s good with this car,” said Hamlin.

“It’s more similar to where he came from. I think the tyre suits him very well. He would still be better than any of the road course racers I ever competed against, certainly.”

Earnhardt Jr implored NASCAR to make changes to the NextGen car to make it better on road courses and short tracks.

He said SVG shouldn’t be punished for his success by having road course races removed from the calendar.

“Nobody wants to get rid of road courses because SVG is great,” said Earnhardt on the Dale Jr Download.

“If I was Trackhouse, and anybody that worked there, I’d want more road courses. I want 12.

“Nobody is wanting to get rid of road courses because SVG is great. I look forward to going to road courses to see if he can be beat.”

Earnhardt said NASCAR, in years past, reacted to the behaviour of its car by changing the schedule.

He noted the inclusion of the ROVAL, which came at the expense of the second Charlotte oval race due to how badly the previous Gen6 car performed.

Now the NextGen car (a la Gen7) is performing badly in the eyes of NASCAR’s expert commentators — and it’s an issue not limited to road courses, with passing almost impossible at times on some ovals in dirty air.

So dominant has van Gisbergen been that he set a record for the biggest winning margin at Mexico City (16.567 seconds) and the second largest at Watkins Glen (11.116 seconds).

“We expect more passing, we expect lots of passing, we expect lots of battles, we expect a faster car to be able to overtake with no problem, we expect contact, we expect door-to-door,” said Earnhardt.

“That’s our expectation because of the last 75 years of what we’ve seen, and when we come up on a road course now and we don’t see what we expect, we’re not willing to allow this type of product to be normalised – or we hope, this won’t be normalised.”

Hamlin added: “The one thing we can fix is the ability for the second play guy, when he gets close, to manipulate and take air off that front car. That’s the only way we’re going to start to see more and more passing and overtaking.”

Funnily enough, behind van Gisbergen, there was a ding-dong battle over second between Christopher Bell and Chris Buescher. Would the reaction have been any different if that were the fight for the win?

Only a year ago, there were incredible scenes when Buescher beat van Gisbergen with a last lap pass. There were few qualms then and the cars, fundamentally, haven’t changed. Van Gisbergen has just gotten better and has a package built around him as opposed to the arrive-and-drive package with Kaulig Racing he had in 2024.

What van Gisbergen thinks of it all

So what does van Gisbergen think of the noise? The Kiwi puts a lot of his success down to a broader effort by Trackhouse.

“Obviously I see a bit of it, but I try to live on the positive side I guess,” he chuckled.

“It’s hard. You know what it’s like when someone dominates. You want change and you want difference, but for us we’ve had an amazing run.

“Boring is good when you’re the one who’s winning. When you’re not, you want it to be changed.

“It’s probably a bit of that, but we’ve had an amazing run and we’ve had some really good race cars. They make it look easy, which is never is.

“It’s just been executing, making everything right. The speed certainly helps.”

Criticism shortcomings

All of this criticism about van Gisbergen’s success omits another element of the argument – he’s an oval rookie.

Success on road courses really shouldn’t be a surprise given his sheer volume of experience there, as well as his versatility to adapt from machine to machine – as we’ve seen him do so well in open-wheelers, rally, sprintcars, and drifting.

“I think it’s just fine that he’s in the Playoffs and he deserves it,” said Kenny Wallace.

“First of all, you look at him… you can’t, right in the middle of a season, go ‘SVG, you’re only good at road course racing’.

“This guy is a rookie. Do you know how many Cup races SVG has run? 38! He’s won five of 38.”

Perhaps the public backlash wouldn’t be so loud if van Gisbergen had a win on an oval. Those in the know suggest that’s just a matter of time.

“We really haven’t been anywhere for the second time yet,” said van Gisbergen’s spotter Josh Williams on Door Bumper Clear.

“A lot of places have still been new and just firing off the truck. We’ve worked on so much different stuff, whether it’s practice and closing that gap to qualifying.

“I feel like he’s to the point now where he can do it for short spurts, it’s just putting whole races together where he can run in the top 15 and start getting in the top 10.

“For the last month and a half, if we execute, we’ve been top 20. I think that, for right now, for him, that’s awesome for going to places the first time. It’s been a lot of fun.”

Who has an answer for SVG?

There is definitely a case to be made for the Cup Series NextGen car being more to van Gisbergen’s liking than the Xfinity Series ‘Car of Tomorrow’.

When compared to the more traditional stock car in the Xfinity Series, the competition is far closer.

On road courses at least, Connor Zilisch has his match. Others, like Austin Hill, have been there or thereabouts too.

Zilisch had van Gisbergen’s number at Watkins Glen until they clashed and the Kiwi wound up in the Turn 7 wall.

The teenager showed in Sonoma he’s got the goods, beating van Gisbergen in a straight shootout.

Like van Gisbergen did a year ago, Zilisch is competing part-time in the Cup Series ahead of an expected full-time graduation in 2026 in place of Daniel Suarez.

Whether Zilisch can translate his Xfinity Series speed into the Cup Series remains to be seen. The young American only qualified 25th at Watkins Glen, but wasn’t helped by the metric putting him in the first group.

By all accounts, Zilisch has all the same versatility that van Gisbergen possesses.

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