SHANE van Gisbergen has scored his first career oval track pole position in the NASCAR Truck Series at Richmond Raceway.
Against a staunch field, including Christopher Bell, SVG’s time aboard the Spire Motorsports #7 Chevrolet Silverado was 0.14sec faster than series front-runner Kaden Honeycutt.
Driving one of Spire’s full-time entries for the first time in the class, backed by Hendrickcars.com, van Gisbergen was the second-to-last runner to set a qualifying lap in the session.
“Thank you to the Spire guys and Hendrickcars.com, Chevy,” said van Gisbergen.
“Pretty awesome, we had a pretty good week and these guys helped me get comfortable and it’s pretty amazing to do that.
“I’m stoked, see how it goes in the race… Man, I don’t know what to say – that’s awesome.”
When pressed on what is behind his oval track improvement, the answer was simple.
“I mean, it’s just time, just getting used to things, and these things are pretty similar to a cup car, I think, so it does translate and help me, so yeah, it’s worth doing this and can’t thank those guys enough for having me and.
“Hopefully we have a good race tonight.”
Earlier in practice, he set the 15th-fastest time.
To date in his stock car racing career, he has six Cup Series poles and has also topped qualifying six times in the second-tier O’Reilly Series.
Between those two classes, he has 14 wins to his credit, all on road or street courses.
Prior to today, van Gisbergen has four starts in the NASCAR Truck Series, with a best finish of third – earlier this year at Watkins Glen, and last time out at North Wilkesboro.
Subsequently, in Cup Series practice, he logged the 22nd-fastest time before qualifying 31st.
The Truck Series race is scheduled to start at 9:30am AEST today.
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