That said, if the 2026 format had been in place for his rookie season in 2025, SVG would still have qualified for the postseason.<\/a><\/p>\n The previous format fell out of favour with many in the NASCAR industry, as the concept of a single race to decide the title was deemed unfair.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it kind of needed a change, but it\u2019s hard for me, the reason I\u2019m in the series is \u2018win and you\u2019re in\u2019, right?\u201d Said van Gisbergen to the Performance Racing Network<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve gotten better at ovals to where I don\u2019t have to rely on it, but it\u2019s certainly going to be an achievement to make that top 16.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s a good target for us and something that is achievable.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it rewards those top guys now that are always winning; they were the guys calling for it, I guess.<\/p>\n \u201cFor me, that\u2019s more of a pure championship, so probably a good thing in that regard.\u201d<\/p>\n One area of significant improvement for van Gisbergen last season was on the ovals, with a string of strong drives late in the year, with a highlight being a tenth-place run at Kansas.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to all of these places for the second, third, fourth time, and I felt so much more comfortable at the end of last year, I think I read that we would have been in the top-16 or right in it, and we would have been 25th or 58th in points halfway through the year, it felt like,\u201d said van Gisbergen.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a really bad start to the year and still made it, so maybe we can do the same this year.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be really cool to start a lot stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n The NASCAR Cup Series season kicks off next weekend with the non-points-paying Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium, although early weather forecasts are pointing to the possibility of winter storms.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/v8-sleuth-magazine-issue-2_1024x1024.jpg\"\/)
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<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SHANE van Gisbergen has reacted to the recently announced changes to the NASCAR Cup Series, which in 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-436991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}