SHANE van Gisbergen has qualified fifth for his debut NASCAR Xfinity race at Daytona, but he’ll have to wait for his maiden start with rain postponing the second-tier race to Monday local time.
The multiple Supercars champion logged a 49.830s lap in his attempt during the single-car qualifying session, which earns him the spot on the inside of the third row, directly behind Kaulig Racing teammate AJ Allmendinger.
Van Gisbergen’s run put him to the top of the standings with 17 cars left to qualify, and his time held until the final six cars made their runs.
In the end, his time fell just 0.128s shy of Jesse Love’s pole-winning time.
The Xfinity Series qualifying session had been delayed several hours due to rain, which delayed the race itself to an 8:30am AEDT start until further rain began to fall during the driver introductions.
Van Gisbergen was officially cleared to race by NASCAR officials during the rain delay, having completed Friday’s Xfinity practice session with the 12th-fastest time and completed a bruising debut superspeedway race in the ARCA Series later that night.
The ARCA event had been a rollercoaster for van Gisbergen, having originally failed to qualify but granted a start after another team withdrew, then experiencing his first ‘big one’ when he was caught up in a multi-car crash on just the fourth lap of the race.
Unhurt and undaunted, van Gisbergen returned to the race once the car was repaired and took the chequered flag in 29th place.
