Shane van Gisbergen Is Officially Coming to NASCAR

The Justin Marks-owned Trackhouse has officially signed Shane van Gisbergen, the Australian Supercars driver from New Zealand who won the big-ticket NASCAR Cup Series race at Chicago in his stock car racing debut in July. The deal will place the driver in a variety of stock cars next season as he learns the ropes of oval racing at 34.

While van Gisbergen's stated goal of eventually moving to America and NASCAR looked inevitable since the win, he will not move into a full-time Cup Series ride immediately. Trackhouse has instead inked the three-time Supercars champion to something more like an accelerated development deal, placing him in an unspecified mix of races across NASCAR's three top national series and in some regional racing in late models. The full details of the schedule have not yet been announced, but Marks says that the program "will be about getting him acclimated to oval-track racing, superspeedways, 1.5-mile tracks, and everything he has never experienced in his career."

The official program begins next season, but van Gisbergen has already gotten his development in stock cars underway. He ran his first oval race in the third-tier Truck Series in August, finishing 19th at Indianapolis Raceway Park. He has also run an additional race in the Cup Series at the permanent road course in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway infield. That race ended with a finish of tenth, giving van Gisbergen an absurd average Cup Series finish of 5.5 through two races.

Van Gisbergen won on debut as part of the team's Project 91, a program designed to give international stars from a variety of other racing series the chance to race in NASCAR with a car that actually has a chance to win the race. The concept was interesting when Kimi Raikkonen made his Cup Series debut with the team last season, and van Gisbergen's win has elevated the program from conceptually exciting to actually impactful on the series overnight. Now, Trackhouse has found a unique path to developing its own star internally.

Van Gisbergen currently sits second in the Australian Supercars championship with four rounds, including the famous Bathurst 1000, left to run. He was disqualified from the first race of the season and has been climbing back since, sitting more than 100 points behind fellow 2023 NASCAR debutant Brodie Kostecki in a series that awards 300 points to the race winner per round.

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