Key Shane van Gisbergen weakness exposed during COTA race

Gone are the days of "road course ringers" in NASCAR, drivers who either showed up specifically for road courses and ran well, or who had limited success on ovals and suddenly came alive a few times a year. Or so people have said.

The all-different Next Gen car, and the increased number of road courses on the NASCAR Cup Series schedule, has led to an increased emphasis on running well at these tracks for the full-time drivers, and thus an increased difficulty for one-off drivers, especially from outside of NASCAR, to come in and make an impact.

But that doesn't mean there can't be exceptions.

Enter New Zealand's Shane van Gisbergen, who is most known in North America for coming to NASCAR with Trackhouse Racing's PROJEC91 program and winning the 2023 Chicago Street Race in a truly historic Cup Series debut. He them committed to the sport in 2024 and won three Xfinity Series races, which were also all on road courses, with Kaulig Racing.

That is just the tip of the iceberg for the Kiwi, who notched 80 wins, 174 podium finishes, and 48 pole positions to go along with three championships in the Australian V8 Supercar Championship.

"SVG" is an outstanding talent who, unlike many who have come before and after him, has shown up with expectations and has instantly performed whenever NASCAR has visited a road or street course, while also showing signs of great improvement on oval circuits where he has next to zero experience.

Despite his massive upside early in his NASCAR career, van Gisbergen does have one flaw he's struggling to shake.

The biggest difference between NASCAR and countless other racing series isn't just the cars, the tires, the stage racing system, or the playoff points format. Plain and simple, it's the on-track racing conduct between all of the drivers; the style of racing, if you will.

In no other professional, national racing series is the wheel-to-wheel combat between all of the competitors as fierce, aggressive, and sometimes volatile as what can be seen in NASCAR. For anybody not too familiar with the sport, this unique and sometimes chaotic form of race craft is perhaps NASCAR's most known commodity, and borderline stereotype.

Time and time again, drivers from outside the sport have shown up for a race or two and been surprised at how rough and tough the regulars can be with each other on the track, including 2009 Formula 1 world champion Jenson Button, who ran two races in 2023 at Circuit of the Americas and the Chicago Street Course.

"I had to take a while to learn the race craft... You get to Turn 1 (at COTA) and everyone is in the way. People are braking later than me and they just hit a car and use that to slow down!... I enjoyed the race, I'd say 60% of it; 40% of it kind of felt a bit silly, the amount that we were hitting each other."

Jenson Button

Van Gisbergen has been no stranger to exactly this. Several times over the last two years, he's talked about how he has been surprised at how hard everybody races each other, and he has mentioned how everyone just "shifts" you out of the way if you're not on the hunt for blood yourself.

While SVG has constantly been adjusting to several things at once since turning to full-time NASCAR racing a little over a year ago, the race craft needed in today's NASCAR has been the biggest adjustment of all. While there is certainly a ton of wheel-to-wheel action and some "rubbin's racing" in the V8 Supercars, NASCAR is just a whole different beast.

Sunday's EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix at COTA was perhaps van Gisbergen's toughest race in this area yet.

SVG had his best run of this young 2025 season with a sixth place finish at COTA. He and the No. 88 team were arguably the fastest on the long runs all day, and he was able to make several passes for the lead on established drivers such as Kyle Busch and Tyler Reddick. He led laps in both stage one and stage two, and he is now the top rookie in the Cup Series points standings in 19th.

However, the time when aggression and decision-making become most important is on restarts. Given how tight and twisty the opening section of COTA is, these become even more crucial than in most other races. For van Gisbergen, it was a tough afternoon in that respect.

On each of the five restarts, including the start of the race itself, van Gisbergen either failed to gain a position or lost positions. Early on, he was able to get those spots back, but after being put three-wide on the lap 54 restart by Christopher Bell, and beating and banging with Reddick and Noah Gragson on the final restart with 13 laps to go, he fell to the bottom end of the top 10 and ran out of time to battle back.

For some, it was a flashback to the final lap at Watkins Glen International last season, when van Gisbergen slipped up at the bus stop chicane, allowing Chris Buescher to make contact with him entering the carousel and ultimately claim the win.

Considering van Gisbergen's superior long-run speed at COTA, and the fact that Bell, who took advantage of SVG leaving the door open on the penultimate restart, went on to win the race, it's easy to see why COTA was a missed opportunity for the Kiwi to get his second career victory and all but lock himself into the playoffs.

If van Gisbergen was going to struggle anywhere in his early days of NASCAR, it was ultimately going to be in the race craft section of the dictionary. The cars are more similar to V8 supercars than they've ever been, the road and street courses suit his background, and his talent and equipment should help him run at least decently on ovals.

Not to say that race craft isn't a skill, because it certainly is, but especially in NASCAR, it's more of a mentality than anything. It's something that almost nobody can figure out without first experiencing it the hard way.

Van Gisbergen, like 90% of race car drivers across the world, grew up honing his craft knowing that over-aggressive driving comes with consequences and dangers. But unless it's extremely severe, that is not the case in NASCAR. He just doesn't have enough experience with it yet.

It's entirely possible and likely that SVG will soon adopt some form of this aggressive style of racing. We already saw a glimpse of it at COTA when he moved Chase Briscoe out of the way late at turn 15.

However, the clock is ticking on his chances to make the playoffs in his debut season. Even if he were to begin running very well on ovals as the season progresses, his best chances to clinch a spot will undoubtedly come at the remaining four regular season road and street course races.

If he doesn't clean up this very clear weakness, it's very likely to cost him another win or two, and that could be the difference between a playoff berth and his season ending 10 weeks early.