Qualifying has been the Achilles Heel of Trackhouse Racing – not only for van Gisbergen, but also for his teammates Ross Chastain and Connor Zilisch.
Across all races this season, van Gisbergen’s average starting position is 18.1. Discounting the road courses, that changes to an average starting position of 19.9 from 12 races.
Chastain and Zilisch have struggled too, with an average starting position of 21.9 and 27.7 respectively on ovals.
Speaking on his Happy Hour podcast, Harvick said van Gisbergen’s recent run – unfortunately – has an asterisk attached to it.
Qualifying for the two most recent races at Charlotte and Nashville were rained out.
The grid was set by NASCAR’s qualifying metric, which takes into account several elements from the previous points-paying race.
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Those include the fastest lap time (15 percent), where the driver finished (25 percent), the owner’s finishing position (25 percent) and the owner points position (35 percent).
Add that up, and van Gisbergen was given third on the grid at Charlotte behind 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick and Ty Gibbs of Joe Gibbs Racing.
A strong showing at Charlotte where he finished 11th paid dividends for van Gisbergen at Nashville too.
Like Charlotte, qualifying was rained out at Nashville, which meant van Gisbergen rolled off 10th thanks to the qualifying metric.
“A lot of this stems from the fact that qualifying has been rained out. It’s given them track position to start up the front of the race,” said Harvick.
“You go back and you look at the [Coca-Cola] 600, he was able to start at the front of the pack. Nashville gets rained out, start at the front of the pack.
“To me, it exposes a problem that they have with qualifying, and if they can get these cars – this car, I don’t know about the other two – if they can get the #97 car to qualify good, he can race up there.”
Harvick was, nevertheless, impressed by van Gisbergen’s recent performances.
SVG took stage points in all three legs at Charlotte en route to 11th. He likely would have done the same at Nashville if not for an ill-timed caution and strategy decisions, though that bore the fruit of a fifth place finish.
Van Gisbergen led 12 laps too – a period that was spent battling with Chase Elliott of Hendrick Motorsports at the end of Stage 1.
“They have the ability to run in the top five, top 10 on the ovals just like they did the last couple of weeks. [It’s a] very unique scenario though because of qualifying being rained out,” Harvick underlined.
“They haven’t shown consistently potential to qualify in the front of the pack to put themselves in this position consistently, but they obviously have the pit crew and the pace if they can get their car qualified up the front.
“It’s somewhat artificial. They race well, but you can’t do that unless you qualify well.”
Speaking after Nashville, van Gisbergen said he enjoyed racing at the front of the field.
“It was really cool to lead for a bit. I had a really cool battle,” said van Gisbergen.
“It’s amazing. You start up the front, your car feels so nice. Then you go to the back on strategy and it just felt like a bucket of shit.
“It was good getting strategy back and getting back to the front again.
“It’s so good racing up the front. You just get better and better and really enjoyed myself.”
The NASCAR Cup Series continues at Michigan International Speedway on June 8 (AEST).
Watch frantic final Nashville laps from van Gisbergen’s view
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