Shane van Gisbergen is officially coming to the United States.
The three-time Australian Supercars champion has signed a full-time agreement with Trackhouse Racing to compete part-time across all three NASCAR national tours in preparation for a full-time Cup Series season by 2025.
The agreement for 2024 calls for the 34-year-old from Auckland, New Zealand to run select Cup Series, Xfinity Series, and Craftsman Truck Series events in addition to racing Late Models and other types of cars throughout the year.
Trackhouse successfully signs ‘SVG’ to a full-time development contract following his wildly successful Cup Series debut, in which he emerged victorious in a one-off on the Streets of Chicago. Team owner Justin Marks had hoped to entice van Gisbergen to make a full-time move to America with his team, and an agreement never seemed in doubt.
“This announcement means so many things to me,” van Gisbergen said. “I’m proud of what I have achieved here in Australia, but I’m excited by this new chapter in my career and the opportunities that it brings.
“I’m so thankful to everyone who has played a role in my career so far, especially Triple Eight Race Engineering, and looking forward to finishing our year with a few more highlights.”
He currently races for Triple Eight, where he is in contention for a fourth Supercars championship. The team also granted him an uncontested release from his contract with a year remaining so he could pursue his NASCAR ambitions.
“It is time for a new challenge and this adventure into NASCAR will be the biggest challenge of my career and one I’m really looking forward to,” van Gisbergen said. “I want to thank Justin Marks and everyone at Trackhouse Racing who have taken a chance on me and given me this opportunity. I’m excited to get to America and getting the season started.”
This entire process began in 2022 with the NextGen car and Marks’ desire to put international champions from other disciplines into a third part-time entry called PROJECT91. It started with two starts at Watkins Glen with Formula 1 legend Kimi Raikkonen but then led van Gisbergen’s dominant victory in the inaugural street race.
He then earned a top-10 finish at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in August after announcing his intent to compete in the USA full-time. Marks has now successfully completed a goal of drawing one of those international stars to compete here full-time.
“This is going to be a tremendous challenge for Shane but he is a tremendous driver as we have all seen,” said Marks. “Next year will be about getting him acclimated to oval track racing, superspeedways, 1.5-mile tracks and everything he has never experienced in his career. It’s obviously going to be a learning process, but we think Shane will perform quite well.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.