Over the course of the 2025 season, Shane van Gisbergen has quickly gone from an intriguing wild card to a polarizing figure in the NASCAR Cup Series.
The New Zealand native was brought to the United States for his road course racing ability, where all he needed to do was win once to qualify for the Cup Series playoffs. He did exactly that, and predictably, fans didn't like it because heaven forbid it cost a driver like Chris Buescher a chance to compete for a championship.
Then van Gisbergen did it again. And again, and again, and now, for a fifth consecutive time in Sunday's Bank of America Roval 400 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval. Oh, and by the way, he's getting better on ovals too.
Accept it: Shane van Gisbergen is a playoff-level Cup Series driver
What van Gisbergen has done this season – and frankly, since his Cup Series debut – on the road courses is completely unprecedented. Not only has he won five straight times, a modern era record, but he's done so while leading a combined 278 of 484 (more than half) of the possible laps in those victories.
At Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Watkins Glen International, and the Charlotte Roval, his margin of victory was double-digit seconds.
This was not supposed to happen. His debut win at the Chicago Street Course in 2023 was supposed to be a fluke because of the wet-weather conditions and a brand-new track that nobody else had driven on. The field was supposed to catch up to him after he won the series' first-ever street race. He's only pulled away. He is already very comfortably in the conversation as NASCAR's road course GOAT.
Van Gisbergen's five wins this season tie him with Denny Hamlin for the most in the series. Even though his success is all condensed into one track type, he is better at that track type than any driver in NASCAR has been at any other track type perhaps since Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s run of dominance on superspeedways in the early 2000s.
And if you're still going to minimize van Gisbergen to a "road course merchant", you'd better cling to that narrative while you can. Just one week before his Charlotte win at Kansas Speedway, he earned his first career oval top 10 finish in the Cup Series. The week before that, he contended for a top five finish at New Hampshire Motor Speedway before he was taken out in an accident.
He is getting better, everywhere. In those precious be-all, end-all full-season standings, he's now up to 23rd. Next season, he should absolutely flirt with being a playoff-level driver on points – that is, assuming the playoffs are still around.
Regardless, let's finally acknowledge how ridiculous it was for fans to be crying bloody murder over Trackhouse Racing "gaming the system" with van Gisbergen. Somehow, nobody batted an eye when Austin Cindric (who has as many top 10 finishes as SVG has wins) or Josh Berry (who only has one more) won their way into the playoffs.
Maybe it was because their wins were on more "conventional" tracks, or because they were higher in points earlier in the year. Cool, good for them. Meanwhile, van Gisbergen has won five times and gets better on ovals every week in what's still his first full Cup Series season. He's proven himself more than worthy of a playoff spot. Even after being eliminated, he's 12th of the 16 playoff drivers in the playoff standings.