Seriously.
It’s not supposed to be as easy as the three-time Australian Supercars champion made it look during practice and qualifying for the inaugural event in Downtown Chicago. Shane Van Gisbergen entered the Grant Park 220 in the Trackhouse Racing No. 91, reserved on a part-time basis for champions from international disciplines interested in sampling NASCAR.
UPDATE: Shane van Gisbergen wins Grant Park 220 on Sunday.
Typically, drivers from other divisions do not immediately adapt to NASCAR, often needing a full-time season to catch up, if they ever do at all. For example, Juan Pablo Montoya left Formula 1 to race in the Cup Series full-time from 2007-to-2013 and only won twice at the highest level.
Formula 1 champions Kimi Räikkönen and Jenson Button have made one-off appearances but have not competed for the win. It’s difficult because being a great IndyCar driver or Formula 1 driver only means so much when strapping into the radically different Stock Car.
So the fact that van Gisbergen immediately got behind the wheel, was fastest in the only practice session of the day, and qualified third for Sunday’s race generated interest and headlines.
Related: F1 champion Jenson Button wants to try new things in NASCAR
Kyle Larson wowed by Shane van Gisbergen’s skills
There are a few caveats, of course:
The second-year Cup Series car was designed as a hybrid of the Australian Supercar and a traditional Stock Car. If there was ever a driver immediately capable of mastering a Cup Series car on a street course, it would be van Gisbergen, who races cars like this on tracks like this in Australia and New Zealand.
Well, mostly.
“Well, we’re sitting on the other side of the car here, that’s the biggest thing,” van Gisbergen said.
Other than that, he said the footwork is the same from the Cup car to a Supercar, and 2021 Cup Series champion Kyle Larson said he can’t match it.
“It was wild watching his feet work,” Larson said. “There’s no way, absolutely no way, if that’s how you have to drive a Supercar and if I ever got to drive one, there’s just no way. Go ahead and scratch off the Supercar from cars I would want to race if that’s how you have to race them.”
From that standpoint, the two men who will start immediately ahead of him in Tyler Reddick and Denny Hamlin, are not surprised to have van Gisbergen up front alongside them.
“I’m not surprised,” Reddick said. “I wouldn’t say surprised, and I guess I would say I’m impressed, given his background and what he’s done. So, I knew he would be fast. It’s cool to have guys like him and Button come here and race with us.”
Hamlin says ‘SVG’ is able to use the entire track, right up against the walls, in a way the full-time NASCAR drivers are not because they’ve never done this before.
“The guy is lightning fast in all of the corners. I feel super uncomfortable using the extra three inches against the wall,” Hamlin said. “So, where the track is the narrowest and where you saw Chase (Elliott) and those guys kind of get into the wall, that’s where he is extremely fast.
He’s just got a feel for those barriers with the car control that he has. That’s his advantage right now — that we’re not used to having to cut corners that tight and he is.”
Statistically, van Gisbergen is the fourth most successful Australian Supercars driver with 79 victories and 46 pole positions in 499 races. He has won the prestigious Bathurst 1000 twice in 2020 and 2022.
And yet, the 34-year-old says he never feels like the driver to beat and certainly doesn’t here as an outsider.
“I never think that way,” van Gisbergen said. “But I know the team is prepared and the car is fast. I just have to do the job.”
Even in Supercars competition?
“I never think that way.”
The element that could challenge him the most on Sunday is the physical aggression of NASCAR races compared to Supercars. In Supercars, drivers are not permitted to initiate contact with each other. In NASCAR, especially on short tracks and road courses, contact goes unpunished.
Van Gisbergen knows what to expect but he hopes it doesn’t play out that way.
“I hope there will be more respect here,” van Gisbergen said. “Watching the last few road course races, it gets crazy and I’ll do what I can to fit in.”
Everything except reciprocate, apparently.
“No, I don’t want to do that,” he said.
But if he has to, and if someone else starts it, would he finish it?
“No way.”
And that unwillingness to race in NASCAR the NASCAR way might be the only weakness the three-time Supercars champion has going against him on race day.
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.