Van Gisbergen finished the overtime-extended 274-lapper in 36th, four laps off the lead.
He wasn’t the only one suffering. Trackhouse Racing stablemates Ross Chastain and Connor Zilisch were slow, each finishing two laps down in 26th and 29th respectively.
A day later, the script flipped completely.
Racing among other cars, van Gisbergen bemoaned understeer as he ploughed through the turns.
At the same time, he chewed through his tyres trying to to slide the rear through the turns by stabbing the throttle.
“Just a struggle for our #97 Red Bull team today,” said van Gisbergen.
“We started out pretty good with our lap times, but the car was just very tight.
“We couldn’t really find the balance on my Chevrolet to keep us competitive.
“We had to make some major changes after losing a [of] couple laps, then just couldn’t make up any positions with the long green flag runs.
“A lot to learn from today, but we’ll be ready for Talladega next weekend.”
Van Gisbergen’s teammate Zilisch took to social media, pleading with fans to stay the course as the team works to understand its issues.
“I know things aren’t going great for us right now but I know nobody is going to work harder than this Trackhouse team to get us back where we belong,” he wrote on social media.
“Stay with us.”
Zilisch’s crew chief Randal Burnett was puzzled by Trackhouse Racing’s lacklustre speed.
“Obviously not the speed we were wanting across the board for any of our cars,” Burnett told Frontstretch.
“We’ve obviously got a lot of work to do to try figure out this new Chevy body package and what we need with our cars. We’ve definitely missed it on the mile-and-a-half stuff.
“It’s certainly not from a lack of effort, just haven’t hit on it yet. We’ve got a lot of work to do in-house and try to get it figured out in a short amount of time.
“We’ve obviously got a new body for the first time in a long time. There are certainly some different characteristics on it that were different from the one that we ran the last three or four years.
“I think as a whole, all the Chevy cars are learning. Some of them are doing a better job of learning than others.
“We’ve got to put our heads down and try to figure out where we’re missing it. I think we’re missing it a lot in a lot of areas when it comes to getting the balance right of our cars, getting the set-ups we need.
“We’ve got a rookie who has an incredible amount of talent, unfortunately we haven’t given him the cars he needs to go out there and perform.”
Chevrolet teams have struggled since the revised Camaro body was introduced.
Hendrick Motorsports’ Chase Elliott is the only bow tie driver to win this season at Martinsville. His teammate Kyle Larson is the best Chevrolet driver in the standings, occupying fifth.
Toyota has been dominant this year, winning seven of the nine races to date. Five of those have been by 23XI Racing’s Tyler Reddick, while Joe Gibbs Racing drivers Denny Hamlin and Ty Gibbs have the other two.
To the same point this time last year, Chevrolet had three wins.
“Something’s got to be going on with Chevy, right? It’s not like they went through a complete body [change],” said NASCAR veteran Hamlin on his podcast, Actions Detrimental.
“We see the numbers, and it’s not that big of a difference. Trust me on this, this change is very small. It’s wild that they have these struggles. Clearly, it’s real.
“The Trackhouse cars were quite a bit better on mile-and-a-halfs to end last year. I think SVG was finishing in the top 15 pretty much every mile and a half.
“Through the off-season, it’s making your stuff worse.
“They have enough resources over there at Trackhouse that they’ll get it figured out. It’s a matter of how much time it takes.
“Even as tough as the year has gone for Chastain, he’s not way out of the cut line to get into the Playoffs.
“There are always ebbs and flows of teams, but usually you don’t see it go this drastically one way.”
The NASCAR Cup Series continues at Talladega Superspeedway on April 27.
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