SHANE van Gisbergen is set to line up from 33rd for tomorrow’s NASCAR Cup Series Jack Link’s 500 at the Talladega Superspeedway, after qualifying for the race was rained out.
The lineup was determined by the NASCAR metric, which accounts for recent results and championship standing and is the reverse of the standard qualifying order.
The starting position corresponds to his starting positions in the two most recent races at the Alabama venue for Trackhouse Racing, where he started 36th and 31st. He started 17th in his two earlier starts for Kaulig Racing.
Pole position for the race was awarded to Tyler Reddick, who leads the season pointscore with five victories to date, including last time out at Kansas.
Curiously, qualifying was set to be the only pre-race track time for the Cup Series this weekend before the weather arrived.
Van Gisbergen will be looking to steady this ship this weekend, after a pair of finishes outside of the top-30 from the two most recent races.
This season has truly presented an offering of feast or famine for the Kiwi, with four finishes outside of the top 30, contrasted by five results inside the top 15.
Superspeedway-styled drafting tracks are a perfect example of this – 30th at the season-opening Daytona 500 was followed by sixth the next week in Atlanta.
It’s worth noting that his Daytona weekend also featured a sixth-place finish in the first Duel, after starting near the rear of the pack.
Talladega, meanwhile, is a track where he has logged ample laps in four Cup Series starts, completing 763 of the 764 laps he has been offered to date.
His results to date have been 28th, 15th, 29th and 11th.
In the second-tier O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, his two race starts in 2024 served up finishes of 22nd and a crash-induced non-finish.
Tomorrow’s race is scheduled to start at 5:00am.
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