Van Gisbergen secured a berth in the post-season title battle with a maiden win in NASCAR’s second tier at the road course that is Portland before making it back-to-back victories at Sonoma.
While the three-time Bathurst 1000 winner has finished as high as third on an oval already this year, that was a fuel race at Atlanta, and he only has one other top 10 when turning left only.
“I need to get better,” he admitted.
“There’s some very tricky ovals in the Playoffs and I just need to keep getting better, keep understanding.
“Obviously, seeing where AJ’s [Allmendinger, Kaulig Racing team-mate] at, we all need to make the cars better too, so I need to focus on what I need, and keep leaning on AJ, leaning on Josh [Williams], and trying to match myself against those guys, particularly in qualifying.
“I’m always qualifying 30th or something. It’s just hard doing one lap and trying to get that – that’s probably my weakness – and I just build up through the race, get better and better.
Secure your spot today.
“Now that I’m locked in, the points don’t matter as much; I can afford to take more risk, but whether that plays out or not, I don’t know.”
In van Gisbergen’s favour is the longer-than-usual, 50-minute practice session this weekend at Iowa Speedway, and the chance to sleep on it before qualifying and the race on Saturday.
“This was kind of a good refresh from ovals,” he said of his Portland and Sonoma wins.
“As I’ve said a few times, I had a really tough stretch of six races – not results-wise – but, challenging tracks, all different types of tracks, and I learned so much, the last six weeks.
“Now back to ovals, hopefully we can keep building on that.
“Again, the next few tracks coming up are all different types of tracks again, and Iowa as well.
“Iowa, I’m really looking forward to that because there’s a long practice – 50 minutes, a couple of sets of tyres – I can finally experiment, take my time, get up to speed, and then push, whereas normally it’s just a 20-minute rush session, straight into qualifying.
“So, hopefully we can take advantage of that and I can experiment in practice instead of the race.”
The New Zealander was also glad to deliver Kaulig’s first wins of 2024.
“It’s obviously an amazing feeling but moreso for the team,” he remarked.
“Kaulig Racing’s a team that’s used to winning races and it’s been a pretty tough start to the year, I guess, and to have this win – two in a row – you see how much it means to the guys, how much the atmosphere in the team was lifted up [at Sonoma off the back of Portland].
“[It was] really cool to share it with those guys.”
Van Gisbergen’s #97 Camaro will sport primary backing from Kubota this weekend at Iowa, where Xfinity Practice starts on Friday at 16:35 ET/Saturday at 06:35 AEST.
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