Shane van Gisbergen is now tied with three other drivers for the most Cup Series wins in 2025.
The former Australian Supercars champion won his third race of the season at Sonoma on Sunday. After starting on pole, van Gisbergen was absolutely dominant. No one had anything for him and he only lost the lead during pit stop cycles.
van Gisbergen was so good that he even won the second stage of the race despite a late pit stop. After pitting with just over two laps to go in the stage, van Gisbergen was second to Kyle Larson on the last lap and easily passed the Cup Series champion for the stage win. Larson hadn’t pitted during the stage. That’s how much faster van Gisbergen was.
With wins in Mexico City and at the Chicago street course last week, van Gisbergen is tied with Larson, Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell as NASCAR’s win leaders this season. Those three drivers are legitimate title contenders.
van Gisbergen is not.
Sunday’s win was his third top-five finish of the season and just his fourth top-10 finish. The 36-year-old entered Sunday’s race 27th in the points standings in his first full-time Cup Series season and has been an absolute zero on any track that isn’t a road course.
At the moment, he’s much more likely to finish 16th and last among the playoff drivers than finish anywhere close to the top 10. After all, he’s never finished in the top 10 on a track that isn’t a road course through his brief Cup Series career. And there is just one road course in the playoffs.
It’s far from a surprise that van Gisbergen has been a non-factor on ovals in his first full-time season in the Cup Series. The Supercars series doesn’t race ovals. And for as similar as those cars are to the current Cup Series car, it’s hard to learn ovals on the fly at NASCAR’s highest level.
Do those struggles diminish just how good van Gisbergen has been on road courses? It’s a question worth pondering in NASCAR’s playoff era.
Playoff success now colors every perception of success and failure in the NASCAR Cup Series despite how random the format can be. The best driver over the first 26 races of the season gets a head start, but a couple bad finishes in the first three-race round can still lead to a surprise elimination. An early playoff exit can easily overshadow a season of excellence.
And van Gisbergen has been absolutely excellent on road courses ever since he entered NASCAR. He was the first driver in over 50 years to win in his Cup Series debut in 2023 when he won the inaugural Chicago race. With four career wins, he’s the winningest non-American NASCAR driver ever at the top level.
There’s a pretty good case to be made that he’s already the best NASCAR road racer ever. The win at Sonoma made him the first driver since Jeff Gordon in 1998 and 1999 to win three consecutive road course races from the pole.
But he’s likely to be out of the playoffs by the time the Charlotte Roval comes around in the second round of the postseason. Despite his three wins, van Gisbergen’s average finish is still well outside the top 20 and he’s not qualifying well either. He’s going to be far behind his playoff rivals at Darlington, Gateway and Bristol in the first round.
Yet a lackluster first round shouldn’t take away from just how awesome he’s been at tracks that include both left and right turns. As the last two weeks have shown, he’s clearly in a class of his own in a Cup Series field that’s far better than it was 20 years ago at road course racing.
And yes, it’s possible to appreciate just how fantastic van Gisbergen is at road courses even though he’ll probably exit the playoffs with a whimper.