He may not have finished higher than 10th place on an oval all season long, but Trackhouse Racing rookie Shane van Gisbergen's first full season in the NASCAR Cup Series was a success, thanks to his historic levels of success on road and street courses.
After a sixth place finish in the season's first road course race at Circuit of the Americas (COTA), van Gisbergen won at every non-oval on the schedule for the remainder of the season, giving him five total victories, a playoff appearance, and a 12th place finish in the championship standings.
Although van Gisbergen finished the regular season in 25th place in the point standings, his four regular season wins were tied for the most in the series and secured him his postseason berth. And yes, even under the new Chase format, with more points awarded to race winners, he actually would have been one of the 16 postseason drivers based on points and points alone.
But times change, and perhaps nobody has been impacted more than SVG.
The 2026 schedule release confirmed that two tracks on the 2025 calendar would not be back this year, and both are venues where van Gisbergen won a year ago.
The Chicago Street Course, where he also won in 2023, is out after three seasons, and Chicagoland Speedway is set to return as its replacement for the first time since 2019. Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez is out after just one season, and the new Coronado Street Course at Naval Base Coronado is set to replace it as NASCAR's second ever street circuit.
Now the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval is reportedly out as well after an eight-year run in the playoffs, and with the Charlotte Motor Speedway oval set to get its second race date back, there are just three road courses remaining on the calendar.
And yes, all three tracks removed are tracks where van Gisbergen won in 2025. His other two wins came at Watkins Glen International and Sonoma Raceway, which are scheduled to host races in May and June, respectively. COTA is scheduled to host its race in March.
Sure, van Gisbergen did improve on ovals as the 2025 season progressed, and those improvements came across short ovals, intermediate ovals, and superspeedways.
But this time around, he likely won't be able to rely on road and street course victories alone to get him into the 2026 postseason. Can he make the further necessary step forward on ovals to establish himself as one of the 16 Chase drivers?
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