Shane Van Gisbergen Qualifies Third in First-Ever NASCAR Start

Shane van Gisbergen, the three-time Australian Supercars champion and two-time Bathurst 1000 winner, is not exactly unfamiliar with racing heavy, V-8-powered cars on a temporary street circuit. Although he had never actually raced in NASCAR before tomorrow's one-off start for Trackhouse, that gives him a major advantage on the new-for-2023 street circuit at Chicago. Van Gisbergen has already shown what that advantage looks like in practice, setting the third-fastest time in the final round of qualifying for the race.

Van Gisbergen also led the day's earlier practice session. He set the fastest lap early in the second round of qualifying, but was bumped on the final laps of the day by both Denny Hamlin and Hamlin's 23XI employee Tyler Reddick.

NASCAR's Next Gen car is similar in design to the Australian Supercars formula used for both its last-gen cars and the Gen 3 cars introduced this season, so similar that Team Penske used one of its older Supercars to help its younger drivers train to race these cars last season. That means van Gisbergen actually has more hours in a car like this on a road course than the entire NASCAR field. The bigger concern will be adapting to NASCAR's rule sets, particularly the double-file restarts and stage breaks that tend to devolve even the best Cup Series races on road courses into chaos. That was a major problem for Jordan Taylor, who ran well in his lone Cup Series start as a fill-in driver for Chase Elliott at the Circuit of the Americas earlier this season before being shuffled back again and again as the race was constantly interrupted by late cautions.

The other big name in the field, Jenson Button, has the advantage of having participated in that COTA event. Button also made the final round of qualifying and will start on the fourth row tomorrow, just a handful of positions behind van Gisbergen. In addition to that race, Button also has a full race weekend of experience driving a modified NASCAR stock car in the 24 Hours of Le Mans as part of the lineup for the much-celebrated Hendrick Motorsports Garage 56 program.

The inaugural Cup Series race at Chicago, the first-ever street circuit event in series history, is set to run at 5 p.m. Eastern time tomorrow.

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