Shane Van Gisbergen, Trackhouse vision comes to life after Watkins Glen

“You look at the weekend, and it’s like seeing a plan come together.”

Sure, there was a big bump along the way with Connor Zilisch getting hurt in Victory Lane on Saturday, but this is precisely Justin Marks’ Trackhouse vision methodically coming into focus.

Shane Van Gisbergen is setting all kinds of NASCAR Cup Series rookie records, having won for the fourth time this season, at the same time Zilisch is backing up his prodigy bonafides in the Xfinity Series.

SVG has won so much this year, just like he did last season in the Xfinity Series, that now everyone can start to talk about what a successful playoff run looks like beyond simply making the Round of 16. Because he has 22 playoff points, and is poised to enter the first round as a top-five seed, Van Gisbergen has a shot to simply avoid trouble and stay above the cutline.

Darlington
Gateway
Bristol

“The one we’d most be worried about is Bristol,” Van Gisbergen said. “I ran terrible there. Bristol was so far from anything I had ever done, and that’s a really tough place. That’s probably the biggest worry.

“But Darlington I feel fine. I think you just have to have — especially now we have a lot of points, too, I think you’ve just got to have three solid weeks and you might get through. We just have to play the averages, make no mistakes, and make sure we’re in a good spot every week, and who knows how far we’ll get.”

But again, hold up, because everyone needs to take a moment to appreciate the absurdity of what Marks and Trackhouse just successfully pulled on the Cup Series industry.

After leading SVG, a three-time Supercars champion in his mid-30s to a win in his Cup debut in Downtown Chicago, Marks made the bet that his road racing skill set would be elite enough to win with regularity.

It hasn’t been since the days of Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart that one driver was so far and above the rest of his peers on these tracks. But Marks believed it even if he had to convince all of his partners to see it through too.

“It’s hard to absorb … because you’re like, you never want to take anything for granted, you never want to go into a race weekend thinking that it’s easy or that you’re going to win or something like that,” said Marks, “because it’s so difficult to do it but to watch him continue to execute at such a high level is why we’ve made a big commitment to him and why he’s in this race car.

“I’m probably — I’m excited for the sponsors and for Chevrolet because we had to sell it to them.

“It wasn’t just us; we had to get a lot of people to come and support it, and we got in front of them and said this is what we think is possible. So, seeing it come together, it’s a great story for our business and great for our partners and it’s going to be hard to really understand the gravity of it until we are removed from it for some time, but right now we’re just enjoying it.”

So here is SVG, Marks and Trackhouse, just a year and a half into this NASCAR journey, and only seven months into the chapter of the highest level and they’re going to have a chance to at least make some noise next month.

If his playoff points can see him through into the second round, it’s a round that contains one more road course in the form of the Charlotte Roval. The third round contains a massive wild card in Talladega where anything is literally possible.

Worst case scenario, Van Gisbergen gets better qualifying orders as a top-16 driver, and gets to sharpen his oval skillsets against the very best with a chance to be even better next year.

Again, like Marks said, this is the vision come to life.

“I’m very encouraged by his rate of learning on the ovals,” Van Gisnergen said. “I think he has only just begun to start to put it together. I think the ceiling is really high for him, and he’s here for a while.

“There’s not going to be a ton of pressure on him this year. It’s going to be like ‘go into the Playoffs and learn about how things start to change in the Playoffs, how teams race each other, how drivers race each other, how important points are, how you’re always looking at the cut line in the next round,’ and that’s going to be another great experience for him.

“I think we have a real opportunity to get to the Round of 8, and either way it’ll be a great learning experience for him and get him prepared for making a deeper run year after year.”

And beyond the records, the first rookie to win four races at the Cup Series level, and the potential playoff possibilities, it isn’t lost on Van Gisbergen how cool his life is right now. He went from being plucked away from Australia as one of the greatest Kiwi drivers to excel in that region’s specialized discipline to an international NASCAR star.

“It normally hits me on the plane ride home or 4:00 a.m. after a few beers,” Van Gisbergen said. “Yeah, I try to reflect on it, but I also try and get to the next week pretty quick, as well. I’ll try not to tweet at 4:00 a.m. this morning.

“But I do nowadays, maybe I’m too old, or getting old, but I try and reflect and take in the moment a bit more. Today was really special. Never had my dog in Victory Lane before and my dad as well. He hasn’t been able to travel all year being sick. To have him here for the next three weeks and have a win with it, it’s just really cool to have that moment.”

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