If the worlds of Supercars and NASCAR are destined to grow closer, Shane van Gisbergen may go down as the link that binds them together.

Van Gisbergen, the three-time Supercars champion, took the Stateside plunge last year and is still making waves in America’s biggest motorsport category.

The Kiwi has long been marked out as a special antipodean talent as a winner or podium-getter in almost every category at which he’s tried his hand.

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Optimism about this suitability for NASCAR was sensationally confirmed in 2023, when he won on his Cup Series in a one-off cameo appearance in Chicago for the sport’s first-ever street race, which he backed up with a top-10 finish at the Indianapolis road course later that year.

A year-long apprenticeship in the NASCAR junior series followed in 2024. The only non-American in the category, Van Gisbergen finished 12th in the championship as the second-best rookie courtesy of three victories.

Promotion to the senior Cup Series beckoned for 2025, and after a tough start comprising just one top-10 finish from the first 15 rounds, the 36-year-old came home strongly to qualify for the playoffs and finish the season 12th with five victories and the accolade of rookie of the year.

Of course Van Gisbergen isn’t the first Supercars driver to cross the Pacific with such intent. Marcos Ambrose is the prototype case, and SVG leant on the Tasmanian’s knowledge during his Stateside transition.

But the Kiwi has already racked up three times as many victories as Ambrose. With just one-full time campaign under his belt his unrealised potential is considerable.

With tomorrow marking the two-year anniversary of Van Gisbergen’s last Supercars race in Adelaide and his full-time switch to the American stock car racing scene, Australian-born NASCAR lead commentator Leigh Diffey tells Fox Sports that the Kiwi immediately caught the establishment’s attention.

“The body of drivers and just the NASCAR Cup Series as a whole have an enormous amount of respect for Shane,” he says

“They started by having an amazing amount of respect for him when [Trackhouse Racing boss] Justin Marks had the foresight to bring him to Chicago and then it all went to plan and he won.

“If it didn’t go to plan, maybe we would never be talking about Shane van Gisbergen in NASCAR, but thankfully we are.

“Phase two was this year where he just absolutely knocked them dead in the road and street course races. The only one he didn’t win was Circuit of the Americas. He’s now had six NASCAR Cup Series wins and five this year, which was incredible. He’s the best NASCAR Cup Series road racer, period.”

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But Diffey, who is returning to Australia as an ambassador of the Adelaide Grand Final this weekend, 27–30 November, said what came next, in the final half of this year, is what has most impressed.

“People would say, ‘This guy is the best I’ve ever seen on a road or street course. He is the best’. But then there was a part that they weren’t talking about, and that was on ovals, because then they’d say, ‘Yeah, but he hasn’t done anything on ovals. He’s finished 33rd. He finished. 29th’.

“In the last five weeks Shane has turned that ship around very, very effectively, and it’s because he had the time to go back to these circuits.

“Remember last year he was racing in the Xfinity [development] series and doing guest spots in Cup. This year is his first full year in Cup, and he’s been able to build a book with his engineers, build that package and in himself as a driver be able to go back to these tracks and say, ‘I remember what I did wrong last time, this is what I’m going to be better’.

“He’s got the attention and the praise from some of my colleagues, like hall of famer Dale Jarrett, who says, ‘This guy has learnt ovals very quickly’.”

Van Gisbergen’s growing list of high points finishes at ovals are highlighted by a top-10 finish in Kansas City and top-15 results in Richmond, Talladega and Martinsville.

It’s put his rivals on notice ahead of his second full-time Cup Series campaign in 2026.

“I often refer back many months to a statement by Kyle Larson, the now two-time Cup Series champion,” Diffey says. “He said, ‘If SVG learns how to drive ovals, we’re in trouble’.

“The respect level for Shane has gone up even more than what it was, because he has shown them on a variety of ovals that he is now learning very rapidly how to drive, and he has fun.

“He has changed the way that he prepares for them. He’s no longer really doing much sim. There’s a lot of in-car-camera watching — he finds that more real and relatable — and whatever his program of learning is that he has implemented himself with his team, it’s working on ovals.

“We don’t have to worry about Shane on road and street courses, but what he’s done on ovals in this last five, six weeks has been remarkable, and I’m really excited for him and really proud of him.”