Oval racing icon Dale Earnhardt Jr. worries how steep the learning curve is for Shane van Gisbergen to become a regular NASCAR Cup Series contender on ovals.
Van Gisbergen is in his first season of the second-division Xfinity Series and it’s widely believed this year is being treated as a warm-up for him to learn oval racing before graduating to the Cup Series.
The cars are considerably different in the feeder category relative to the top-flight Cup Series. Benefitting van Gisbergen is that the Cup cars are closer to the Supercars he used to race in terms of their design and behaviour.
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There are very few drivers who have been prolific before moving to NASCAR. Juan Pablo Montoya was an IndyCar champion and race winner in Formula 1 before moving to NASCAR. He never won on an oval but was a frontrunner on occasion.
“I guess one great comparison would be Juan Pablo Montoya. I don’t have Juan’s stats in front of me but I remember there being about a year and a half to two and a half years of him just figuring it out,” said Earnhardt Jr. on his podcast The Dale Jr. Download.
“When it really all came down to it, where did we all land on Juan Pablo Montoya as an oval racer? I mean, this was a great race car driver.
“I don’t know of another comparison to that, of a guy that’s been racing a certain style his entire life and is going to switch over to ovals in a stock car — and I know it’s not really a stock car, this is literally almost identical to what (Shane has) been racing all his life (in Supercars).
“So there’s that part of it you hope is going to help him be able to adapt quicker to the ovals.”
Van Gisbergen has already proven himself on road courses. He won on the streets of Chicago last year, becoming the first driver in 40 years to win on debut in the Cup Series.
More recently, he took back-to-back Xfinity victories at Portland and Sonoma and drew praise for his post-race celebrations.
Ovals have been where the Kiwi has had to learn the most. He crashed twice in his most recent outing at Iowa Speedway, the first of which forced him into a backup car.
Once van Gisbergen learns the ovals, he’ll then have to learn how to race a completely different car.
The Xfinity Series cars are closer to what NASCAR has known as stock car racing for the longest time.
The newer Cup Series cars bear a closer resemblance to their road-going counterparts with bigger wheels, lower profile tyres, and symmetrical body panels.
The cars also behave differently between the two series, with aerodynamic downforce primarily being generated by the rear diffuser under the Cup cars, an element absent from the Xfinity cars.
“The thing that’s probably most challenging for anybody, myself included, to get in the Next Gen (Cup) car on an oval is understanding how the aero works,” Earnhardt Jr. explained.
“Now that the air goes underneath the car and back to the diffuser, how that works in traffic is completely new to anyone. All of the drivers like Denny (Hamlin), all these boys who have been racing this car since it came into the series, have been learning that.
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“Some of the things we already knew about dirty air and how the cars would react behind each other are applicable to the Next Gen car, but everything about the air going underneath the car going to the diffuser and how to keep that happening to the best of your ability when you’re in traffic – that’s the big trick in this car.
“When you’re in 20th and you’ve got eight cars in front of you taking up a lot of race track, where do you go to get as much air as you can underneath to that diffuser?
“That’s one of the most fascinating things about the Next Gen car and the drivers and how they’ve had to adapt and learn how to keep air on that diffuser underneath the car. So they already know everything about oval racing that SVG doesn’t know and they’ve got a year or two on him learning how to use this particular car on an oval. So it’s pretty challenging.”
Van Gisbergen has so far made three starts in the Cup Series this year. Two of those have been on ovals – Talladega and Charlotte.
He has just one more Cup Series oval start this year at Las Vegas before a potential full-time graduation in 2025 with Trackhouse Racing.
“He’s not running that many ovals,” Earnhardt Jr. continued.
“He’s not getting any experience with this Next Gen car on the ovals, so everything he’s learning about it on the Xfinity side… he’s only getting about 50 per cent of it.
“I watched Josh (Berry) a lot and I watched him transition and try to go run the Cup car. He had those ‘damn’ moments ‘what the heck’ moments. He’d go down in the corner, follow someone down into the corner and lose the whole car because the air wasn’t on the diffuser and he had to learn: ‘Shoot, I can’t follow them down into the corner like I could in my Xfinity car or any other car I’ve driven in my life’.”