BOTH Shane van Gisbergen and Trackhouse Racing have hinted at expanding their relationship in 2024.
With each passing week, it had become more and more clear that van Gisbergen will permanently based in the United States next year.
The last hurdle, it seemed, was ensuring that his Triple Eight Supercars team was not left high and dry by his early departure (he is contracted through 2024).
That’s no longer a concern with Erebus Motorsport agreeing to release Will Brown at season’s end to join Triple Eight, leaving SVG clear to commit to a beefed-up NASCAR campaign.
Van Gisbergen is this weekend making his second Cup Series start with Trackhouse Racing, with that visit to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course immediately following a dabble into bitumen oval racing in the third-tier Truck Series.
The Truck Series call-up for Niece Motorsports was orchestrated by Trackhouse boss Justin Marks, in yet another sign of his desire to help the Kiwi establish himself Stateside.
Marks has previously listed a maximum of three annual rounds for its Project 91 concept, with anything beyond that becoming too much of a drain on its regular entries.
However, he has already told The Athletic: “If he’s going to do this (full-time), it would only make sense that he does it with us.”
Speaking in the last 48 hours, van Gisbergen said: “As long as they (Triple Eight) are happy with who is going to replace me, I’ll be happy leaving.
“I’m trying to get something over here and working on it. I don’t have anything signed up.
“I’m loving Trackhouse, where I am now, and the plans that Justin has proposed for the future is pretty exciting.
“So I’d love to be here and keep working and expand my career and come over and have a crack.”
Explaining how the Truck Series cameo came about, the 34-year-old added: “Obviously I have been speaking with Justin a lot about the future and I guess it was just another thing that came to his head: why don’t we jump in and do this race?”
Van Gisbergen did not entirely rule out any further outings this year, nor did he specify exactly what mix between Cup Series and the second-tier Xfinity Series he’d like on his plate in 2024.
“It would be good to do more Cup races,” he said.
“I think the difference between the Cup car and the Xfinity is quite a large gap in the way the car drives, so it would be good to do more Cup races.
“They’re very relevant to where obviously I want to end up in the Cup Series but you have got to pay your dues; it’s such a big learning curve with all of the oval stuff and especially the superspeedways, that looks like a whole different type of racing that I have never done before.
“So yeah, it’s going to take me a lot of time to learn and I have got to do as much racing as I can and work back up through the classes probably to make sure I’m comfortable and understand the oval racing world.”
What licencing hurdles van Gisbergen might face has been a common question among Supercars fans, and was discussed by American-based NASCAR journalist Nick DeGroot on this week’s Castrol Motorsport News Podcast.
“On the licencing side, you have got to be 18 for certain tracks, which he has got covered,” he said.
“And the other thing is superspeedways: NASCAR is very cautious about approving people for those because if you make a mistake on a normal track and you wreck, you’re in the wall, oh well. If you make a mistake on a superspeedway, 25 people wreck and it can get pretty dangerous pretty quick.
“If you look at past precedents, NASCAR it’s at their discretion and they look at certain drivers based on their background.
“Like if you have no oval experience like Shane does, they’re probably going to be like ‘alright, you need to superspeedway racing in the Xfinity or Truck Series before we let you do something like the Daytona 500’.
“But then you have guys like Conor Daly, he never does superspeedway racing and they approved him for the Daytona 500 because of his experience in IndyCar.
“But Shane having no previous experience, I’m sure if he wants to run the Daytona 500 or any Cup race at a superspeedway next year, he’s going to have to do it in the Truck or Xfinity Series first.”
