This season, Shane van Gisbergen has shown that he's no longer just a road-course king. His 5th place finish at Nashville became his 4th top-10 of the year, and only two of those were road courses. But Kevin Harvick is questioning the legitimacy of his oval success.

The Happy Hour hosts were discussing how SVG has the third-best average finish when you combine the stats for the last few races, but Harvick said, “But it’s artificial. It’s somewhat artificial. They race well, but you can’t do that unless you qualify.”

Harvick pointed to the fact that the last two qualifying sessions in both Charlotte and Nashville were canceled, putting SVG in a better starting slot. The Trackhouse #97 driver started the Charlotte race in third and finished 11th, picking up 33 points. At Nashville, he got to start at 10th and he finished 5th.

“I think a lot of this stems from the fact that qualifying has been rained out and it’s given them track position to start up in front of the race… To me it exposed a problem that they have with qualifying,” said Harvick.

The previous races did show SVG not qualifying well at tracks like Talladega (33rd) or Texas (30th). Despite this, his finishes were 20th and 17th, respectively. This shows how it's not the race day, but qualifying where the #97 team needs to work more.

Which is why Harvick had a simple solution for them.

“I don’t know about the other two, but if they can get the 97 car to qualify good, he can race up there. I mean they have the ability to run in the top five top ten on the ovals just like they did the last couple of weeks."

And it's not that SVG doesn't realize this. Post the race in Nashville, SVG said, “We had a bad couple of months and a few weeks ago, it feels like it’s turned around. It’s areal momentum based sport and confidence-based as well. We just need to keep that and lift our teammates up with us. If we’re all running good, it will really help the team.”

And to do this, he needs more time with Trackhouse, which was recently confirmed.

SVG and Trackhouse extend with hopes to keep rising

SVG won his NASCAR debut race at the Chicago Street Circuit in 2023 in Trackhouse’s Project 91 Chevrolet, and since then, he and Trackhouse have been inseparable. Since then, SVG has picked up a total of seven road course wins in his time in the Cup series. 

With his newfound form at Ovals and showing a steady progression, Trackhouse Racing and the Kiwi driver announced a multi-year contract extension that will see SVG compete in NASCAR for the foreseeable future for Trackhouse Racing. 

Trackhouse’s owner, Justin Marks, stressed SVG’s meteoric progression in the sport as a remarkable contributor for the team to continue putting faith in a driver who transitioned from Supercars and GT cars to stock cars on ovals.  

Marks said, “We have someone here that can win anytime we show up at road courses, and winning is so important here in the Cup Series. What kind of excites us at Trackhouse more than anything is his speed of development on the Ovals…We feel excited and comfortable to make a longer-term commitment to Shane. We think he’s got an oval win in him in the Cup Series.”

SVG also expressed his excitement in continuing to grow along with Trackhouse Racing to get more success on road courses while trying to get even more competitive on ovals. 

Having recently cracked his first top-five finish, SVG will hope the momentum has swung in her favor for good. And the way he's been improving, it may not be too long a wait until we see SVG’s first oval victory.

You can read more on the Daytona Racing Digest!

Written by

Debrup Chaudhuri

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason