AT the age of 36, Shane van Gisbergen can be considered a mature age rookie in the NASCAR Cup Series, with the Kiwi looking to lean on his 19 years of experience racing at a professional level, as the Playoffs kick off this weekend in Darlington.

Going into the first race, van Gisbergen has amassed 22 bonus Playoff Points by virtue of his four race victories and two stage wins this season, which provisionally places him sixth in the standings, some 16 points above the cut line.

After Darlington, World Wide Technology Raceway and the Bristol Night Race, the top 12 of 16 will advance to the next round.

For SVG, lessons learned last year in his Xfinity Series Playoff run, plus his Supercars career, will place him in good standing for his latest endeavour.

While he won the Supercars Championship three times, he also finished in the top five at the end of the season on nine other occasions.

Van Gisbergen performs his trademark celebration. Pic: Red Bull Content Pool

“I remember last year, the way it was approached was different to the rest of the season,” said van Gisbergen.

“We got caught up in the moment a little bit too much.

“We did a silly strategy at the Roval. It was an unexplained mistake, really.

“I think this year it’s been good… just trying to stay level-headed, take it week by week.

“We’re in an amazing spot to be here, and we have no expectation to make it through the second round.

“No one knows what we’re going to do. If we go and perform, we can surprise some people.

“You just know that you can’t make the mistakes because it would be hard to dig ourselves out of that.

“We just have to keep doing what we’ve been doing, but it’s so hard in a NASCAR race, I feel like every race you have a storyline of how the day goes.

“It’s never free-flowing really, so we just have to eliminate or minimise what we do wrong, and just try to get it right every week, and that comes with preparation.

“Coming into the race on Sunday, I’ll be nervous as anything.

“You get all that anxiety about it, and you learn.

“This means everything to us, we’ve worked all year for this, and you learn to channel it.

“It’s good to be nervous; it means you care about it.

“So, I kind of embrace that more nowadays, and you know if you don’t feel that, you’re probably in the wrong sport.”

For van Gisbergen, progressing through the opening round will be a matter of maintaining consistency.

“I think it’s just going to be the law of averages for us, right?” he said.

“We’ve got to be above average, and that’s the shot we’re going to have to get through.

“We’ve got to have three decent finishes and we’ll be able to get through the round, right?

“I don’t know about the points total, how many certain points are the average to get through, but I know I need to get better to make it work.”