The next chapter of the fast-moving Shane van Gisbergen experiment will be a full-time NASCAR Cup Series season in 2025.
The New Zealander will be in a third Trackhouse Racing car as the organization expands its footprint. It was a move that Justin Marks had been eying for some time, but van Gisbergen unexpectedly claimed the seat when he won in his Cup Series debut in Chicago last year.
That triumph changed everything for van Gisbergen, who was, at the time, committed to another year in Australia, where he is a three-time Supercars champion. And it also changed everything for Trackhouse Racing, which suddenly found itself with more drivers under contract than seats available.
But van Gisbergen being the chosen one was the only real option. Before he had even run a lap in a Cup Series car, van Gisbergen was being asked about possibly doing an oval race or something more in stock cars. His contract situation didn’t matter; nor did the fact that he hadn’t given any indication he would ever make a career change.
Since May of last season, when the announcement was made that van Gisbergen was coming to the United States to compete in the Chicago race, he has been one of the biggest attractions in the sport. He has spent this year getting his feet underneath him in the Xfinity Series, where he already has three victories and will be in the postseason.
“It’s been a pretty awesome 18 months,” van Gisbergen said. “It’s been a huge life change and everything [Justin Marks] said was going to happen, has happened. I never thought it would happen this quick, and I’m very glad we’ve done the learning year this year in Xfinity; Kaulig Racing has been great to work with, and then also have a lot more races to finish the year. It’s been a huge learning experience, but excited to get full-time in the Cup Series next year.”
At 35 years old, van Gisbergen is the guy. Consequently, it means 25-year-old Zane Smith is not.
Trackhouse Racing and Smith will part at the end of the season. The decision came less than a year into the partnership between the two sides, which was expected to be long-term.
The harsh reality or perhaps more accurately, the harsh nature of the racing business, is how things have unfolded for Smith. There was no foreshadowing that van Gisbergen was coming or how improbably things would turn out with him when Trackhouse Racing eyed Smith as the company’s future.
“I think when we decide the drivers, it’s a big picture and we cast a wide net of certain qualifications,” Marks said. “It’s a commercial sport, it’s fit in the company, it’s personality, all that, and we don’t have four cars, we have three. We had to make a decision. We’re excited about the decision we made with SVG.”
The timelines for Smith and van Gisbergen have been remarkable. van Gisbergen’s deal for Chicago was announced in May, and he made his first NASCAR appearance at Nashville Superspeedway in June, where those questions about what the future could look like emerged. His victory in Chicago happened in early July.
In the meantime, Smith, the 2022 Craftsman Truck Series champion, made it known he was ready for the next step in 2023. Smith did not want to be in the Truck Series for another season and was impressing in the partial Cup Series schedule he was running with Front Row Motorsports.
On September 13 came the announcement that van Gisbergen had signed a development deal for the 2024 season with Trackhouse Racing. Three days later, Trackhouse Racing and Smith sat in the Bristol Motor Speedway media center, announcing a multiyear deal that aimed to have Smith competing in-house in 2025. At that time, Marks compared the addition of Smith to the organization to signing the No. 1 draft pick.
“This moment right now is about Shane van Gisbergen. This is an SVG moment, I’m going to keep it an SVG moment,” Marks said when asked a second time about Smith.
“I will tell you that the reason we chose to go with Shane for this third car is that, yeah, there’s not a lot of experience in the Cup Series, there’s some unknowns, there’s going to be a lot of hard work. But Shane checks a lot of boxes for a really, really compelling story and building a great business in this sport. He’s incredibly talented. He’s incredibly dedicated. There’s a reason why he was the first one to win on debut since Johnny Rutherford in 1963; that’s a big thing.
“Obviously, the Chicago street race is in his wheelhouse, but the rate of adaptability of everything else – the competition, the restarts, the pit stops, the way he prepared for that race. It was like, man, this is a superstar, and this is somebody that we’re really excited about committing to, knowing that it’s a relatively unconventional path to a Cup car. But we wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t think this guy could win lots and lots of Cup races and be a playoff contender. So, it was honestly a pretty easy decision, because he just checked a lot of boxes for us, and everybody in the company is really excited about it.”
Smith, a decade younger than van Gisbergen, has a longer career runway ahead. It might not feel like it right now being back on the job market, but he is a talented commodity that any team owner will be lucky to have in their lineup.
However, the time for van Gisbergen, who will see his runway get even shorter when he turns 36 in the middle of next season, is and has to be now.