Shane van Gisbergen has the opportunity to buck the trend and be one of the most successful foreign-born NASCAR drivers.
van Gisbergen set the bar of expectations high when he came out and won in his NASCAR Cup Series debut on the streets of Chicago last summer. Quickly bitten by the stock car bug, van Gisbergen, a three-time Australian Supercars champion, entered three additional NASCAR races in 2023 and has since relocated from Australia to transition full-time into the sport. Kaulig Racing will field him in the NASCAR Xfinity Series and there will also be at least six Cup Series starts on his schedule.
“I think he’s he has a huge level of talent and a huge level of preparation,” Brandon Thomas, NASCAR VP of vehicle design, told RACER. “I think there’s a big difference in a 38-race schedule. Certainly, the ovals are going to be radically different. he certainly gives the impression, from the outside looking in, that he’s serious.
“In the past see some of the drivers who have come in, they were definitely as serious, but if they weren’t in a good situation, and it’s easy to get demoralized and not produce the results, and the wheels kind of come off quickly. I think if he’s putting 100% effort into it, he’ll plot his own path and be fine.”
Mexico native Daniel Suarez is currently the only foreign-born full-time driver in the series and has one career victory. However, he is a former Xfinity Series champion.
Suarez isn’t the first and van Gisbergen, who has aspirations of being a Cup Series driver, won’t be the last to come along. There have been other international drivers who came to NASCAR and experienced mixed results, and three who have stood out prior to van Gisbergen.
A driver of similar background to van Gisbergen, Marcos Ambrose, won two races in his Cup Series career, both on the Watkins Glen road course. In six seasons, the two-time champion in what was then the V8 Supercars Series never finished higher than 18th in the Cup standings. Of his five Xfinity Series wins, four came at Watkins Glen and the other in Montreal.
Dario Franchitti is an open-w heel legend but his NASCAR career is a sidenote. Franchitti wanted a new challenge when he embarked upon his switch, but quickly questioned what he was doing in stock cars with Chip Ganassi Racing. In 2007, he made four Xfinity Series before moving into the Cup Series in 2008. His tenure lasted 10 races. Franchitti suffered a broken ankle in the spring (during a Xfinity Series race) and failed to qualify for a handful of races upon his return.
Ganassi also lacked funding to properly field the car, ending Franchitti’s season early. Of his 29 national series starts, Franchitti earned two top-10 finishes.
Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya gave NASCAR racing a respectable go. Montoya won two Cup Series races in 255 starts, at Sonoma (2007) and Watkins Glen (2010). Perhaps most impressively, Montoya finished eighth in the championship standings in 2009 with 18 top-10 finishes. Of his seven full seasons at NASCAR’s top level, just twice (2009 and ’10) did he earn a double-digit number of top-10 finishes. Montoya also has a Xfinity Series victory (he made 23 starts) on his resume from 2007 in Mexico City.
van Gisbergen is contracted through Trackhouse Racing, who has entered into an alliance with Kaulig Racing. Both are winning organizations, putting van Gisbergen in capable equipment.
The New Zealander is all-in on his new adventure. The road and street courses should require little adjustment, but the ovals will be where van Gisbergen has the most to learn. Mike Hillman Jr. served as van Gisbergen’s crew chief in his lone Craftsman Truck Series race on an oval, at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, and found their performance slightly exceeded expectations.
“The biggest goal was to get him to run every lap, and IRP is probably one of the hardest short tracks that we go to with multiple lines, a lot of tire fall off, a lot of different things going on,” Hillman said of their 19th place finish. “The Truck Series, they like to get a little rowdy and tear some stuff up, but he kept all the fenders on it and ran every lap, and to finish in the top 20, I thought that was a good day.”