Shane van Gisbergen is preparing to leave for the United States this week but offered a little bit of clarity over his inaugural full-time NASCAR schedule before packing his bags.
The 34-year-old, three-time Australian Supercars champion appeared on the Gypsy Tales Podcast last week and gave a bit of an expectations check on a diverse schedule of oval racing across a variety of categories next season.
“I kind of know what I’m doing. It’s not fully confirmed or announced yet, but I’ll end up hopefully doing 30 races or even 40 if I get enough mixed classes,” van Gisbergen said. “It will be mainly in the Xfinity Series but a lot of Cup races and maybe some Truck stuff too.”
Justin Marks, who owns Trackhouse Racing, has signed van Gisbergen to a development deal and has also indicated a desire to get SVG into a good number of pavement Late Model races as well. Marks co-owns the CARS Tour alongside fellow NASCAR luminaries Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton.
Mostly, van Gisbergen said, this upcoming season is about getting culturally and competitively acclimated to the oval heavy racing intricacies of NASCAR.
“Just experiencing everything, going to all of the tracks, and even the weekends where I’m not racing, or not racing Cup, I’ll just be there learning and being a part of the team and watching all of the strategies and pitstops, be in all of the meetings and understand what is going on,” said van Gisbergen.
“It’s just an experience year so I’m ready for hopefully ’25 when I’m in the Cup Series full-time, I’m ready to go and understand what’s happening every week. So next year there’s plenty of racing, but mainly learning.”
Supercars is entirely a road and street course racing discipline, even though NASCAR Cup Series cars now share some nuances with the previous generation of Supercar chassis. That allowed him to win the inaugural Cup Series street course event in Downtown Chicago and also finish inside the top-10 at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.
He finished 19th in his first ever pavement oval race, a Truck Series race at Indianapolis Raceway Park on Brickyard weekend. As it turns out, he was incredibly sick that entire weekend.
“I woke up real bad, I think I woke up at four and just started spewing and didn’t feel really good,” van Gisbergen said of Cup Series race day morning.
“I thought, ‘we need to put the media stuff off’ and they said, ‘we kind of need to do it,’ so I tried to go to the track but I couldn’t handle my breakfast. I tried to have a coffee and it came straight back up.
“I just went to the medical center and got a bit of help there from the medical staff, which was good. I was able to do the race but certainly wasn’t at my best. I don’t know how much better I would have been if I was at 100 percent, but I was pretty drained.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.