After being a victim of an unfortunate wreck at San Diego, Shane van Gisbergen was back to winning ways in the Sonoma weekend. But the end of the last race also ended the road course advantage SVG had to enjoy until the Chase.

And Denny Hamlin, who saw SVG’s driving up close at Sonoma, says he needs to pull up his socks if he wants to make the cutoff.

In his weekly Actions Detrimental episode, Hamlin sat down to discuss SVG’s Chase cutoff chances. He started by pointing out the problem with Trackhouse Racing right now, which isn’t the driver, but the speed.

“You could beat him. But you’re still got to put in the back of your mind that Trackhouse cars have still not been great this year. So he’s probably not driving the fastest car, but he’s driving it the fastest. Maybe he gets the advantage back when his cars get a bit faster,” Hamlin said.

The perfect example of what Hamlin is saying was seen at COTA, for example. No matter how fast SVG tried, with every closing lap, Tyler Reddick, the race-winner, kept getting further away from him.

Hamlin then got straight to the point on the podcast, where he mentioned that SVG’s another issue is him running mid-pack around 30^th, where he’s more prone to being caught up in wrecks. SVG’s rank in the last three races before Sonoma was 30 or worse, all of which he was victim to multi-car pileups.

“If he can avoid that over the next eight weeks, I think he can hold that over a Cindric, Jones, Keselowski. Cause it’s not like those guys are having 50 point days.”

Austin Cindric, Erik Jones, and Brad Keselowski are 16^th, 17^th, and 18^th respectively. Shane van Gisbergen sits above all three of them at 14^th.

This season, the Kiwi’s oval game has certainly seen significant improvement, but Hamlin questions, “Do they have the short track speed?” that are coming ahead.

All in all, combined all the reasons stated above, Hamlin summed it up with one simple piece of advice for the New Zealander:

“I think SVG, he’s gonna have to be tidy-tidy with his weekends.”

Meanwhile, as SVG’s Cup future is being discussed, the No. 97 recently addressed his Supercars colleague’s visit at Sonoma.

SVG wants to see his Supercars buddy join him in NASCAR

Broc Feeney, SVG’s close friend and former teammate at Triple Eight Race Engineering, was at the Sonoma track, only to catch SVG win not once but twice over the weekend.

But Feeney’s visit prompted SVG to reignite the conversation around having the former try his hand at NASCAR.

“I think [Feeney] tried for Watkins [Glen] and Sonoma, he really wants to have a crack,” van Gisbergen said on the Dale Jr Download. “I’m sure he’d be like me. Maybe he’d want to have a go on the ovals after, but it’d be really interesting to see how he’d go.”

Feeney, a 30-time Supercars race winner, had already tried for NASCAR in 2025 but things didn’t work out at the time. But if things do work out, SVG can surely be right about Feeney’s racing profile in NASCAR matching his.

"He’s on the ovals all the time iRacing, watching all the ovals, texting me all the time. I think he would be really good,” SVG added.

As of now, Feeney is still under contract with Triple Eight till 2029. While Feeney didn’t comment recently on this, last year he did mention, “The ovals don’t interest me, but for sure I’d go run a road course if the opportunity came up.”

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Written by

Suyashdeep Sason

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason