Shane van Gisbergen is now 12 races into his first full season in NASCAR, including two in Cup so far in 2024 alongside a full-time Xfinity Series programme.
He has just experienced a rare weekend off, but there was still a Supercars driver in action at Kansas Speedway with regular Tickford Racing pilot Cam Waters making a second start in the Truck Series.
Brodie Kostecki made a cameo in the Cup Series on his way to winning the 2023 Supercars Championship title with Erebus Motorsport and though he is not expected to do so this year, Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Will Brown appears to be in the frame for an appearance in a Richard Childress Racing entry in coming months.
While Owen Kelly made a handful of road course starts in the past decade, it has not been since Marcos Ambrose wrapped up his NASCAR career in 2014 that Supercars fans have had one of their ‘own’ to follow on a regular basis in any of the national series (noting that Melburnian James Davison was a semi-regular in the 2021 Cup Series but has no competitive Supercars experience).
Nowadays, one can expect to see SVG cutting his teeth in a #97 Chevrolet Camaro of a different kind on any given weekend, usually at a friendly enough time on a Sunday morning for viewers in Australia and particularly in his native New Zealand.
So, are you more interested in NASCAR than you used to be, and if so, has that come at the expense of your interest in Supercars?
And – who knows? – perhaps NASCAR fans have decided to take a look at the tin top action on offer Down Under because of that guy with the Dutch surname who won on debut on the Chicago Street Circuit.
Based on the spikes in Speedcafe’s page views after Xfinity Series races – and any Cup Series races in which van Gisbergen partakes – Supercars fans are certainly paying attention to his exploits in the United States.
That the three-time Bathurst 1000 winner is trying to get his head around the art of not just oval racing in a broad sense, but also the idiosyncrasies of superspeedway ‘plate’ racing versus intermediate ovals and short tracks, has added extra intrigue.
We saw just over a fortnight ago how his fortunes fluctuated in both the Xfinity and Cup races at Talladega, in the first event at which he arrived with competitive superspeedway experience.
He stated afterwards that he hoped to have earned the “trust” of his rivals, although van Gisbergen has also thrown his weight around when he sees fit, having dished out some payback to Austin Hill in the Xfinity race on the road course that is the Circuit of The Americas.
Not only are those engrossed in the Supercars world learning more about NASCAR – as even Roland Dane acknowledged in the latest episode of the Polarizer podcast – van Gisbergen’s journey has created/exposed other narratives for uninitiated Antipodean viewers, such as Hill becoming a villain (or perhaps a hero if one still considers van Gisbergen himself the villain).
Similarly, Waters fans now know who Layne Riggs is, after their post-race exchange just over 24 hours ago at Kansas.
Notably, Waters’ Kansas outing bisected the four-week gap between the Taupo Super400 and the next event of the Repco Supercars Championship, the Bosch Power Tools Perth SuperSprint on May 17-19.
At a time when the Supercars calendar is virtually unanimously regarded as being too sparse, the NASCAR Xfinity Series – or, failing that, the Truck Series – are alternate tin top motorsport fixes on television.
Of course, they always were, but Supercars fans can now follow on with a level of investment in the outcome, which helps one get through some of the more tedious races or periods thereof.
But, what about you? Are you more interested in NASCAR and, if you are, has that interest come at the expense of Supercars? Or, do you just casually follow the (current or former) Supercars drivers’ results?
Cast your vote below in this week’s Pirtek Poll.
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