![\"Frustrating](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/HVg0wZ5a0AAEtfc.jpeg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tShane van Gisbergen on track during the NASCAR Cup Series at Talladega.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tShane van Gisbergen on track during the NASCAR Cup Series at Talladega.<\/p>\n
This weekend marks van Gisbergen\u2019s fifth NASCAR Cup Series start at Martinsville.<\/p>\n
The circuit has been a strong suit for the New Zealander with an average finish of 17.8.<\/p>\n
In four starts, he has three top 15 finishes and a rap sheet that reads 12th, 34th, 14th, and 11th.<\/p>\n
It was also the scene of his second-best NASCAR Cup Series oval qualifying of fifth earlier this year.<\/p>\n
From there, van Gisbergen went backwards, however. He narrowly missed out on a top 10 finish, regularly losing ground to his rivals on the two-by-two restarts en route to 11th.<\/p>\n
It left the Kiwi \u201cpissed off\u201d as he struggled with tyre wear and car positioning on restarts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wasn\u2019t good enough on the restarts,\u201d van Gisbergen reflected.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would lose one or two spots each time and then wouldn\u2019t be able to get them back.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had good speed and I was able to drive back up to the guys that passed me.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I\u2019ve gone to Martinsville, I\u2019ve gotten better and better. So, there is good progression there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a good notebook on these types of tracks, so I think that really helps me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Van Gisbergen has often noted that the short tracks put great emphasis on the driver, who can overcome car deficiencies \u2013 and reiterated that point ahead of this weekend.<\/p>\n
Short tracks, in general, have brought van Gisbergen good results. His best oval finish to date remains fifth at North Wilkesboro this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like you can have a little more influence on the car, like you can manipulate it with the brake or brake bias and whatever gear you\u2019re running,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can vary your line a little more. I feel like there\u2019s a little more as a driver you can do.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlso, that just means on the big tracks, I\u2019m not good enough to know what I want from the car yet or how to get the car to do what I want, whether that\u2019s with feedback to my engineer or just in general.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like these tracks, you can kind of make up for a deficiency in the car, as well, with whatever tools you have, whereas on a big track, you\u2019re kind of just stuck with what you got sometimes. So yeah, it seems to help me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NASCAR Cup Series Xfinity 500 at Martinsville is the second-to-last race of the season and gets underway at 5:09am AEDT on Monday, November 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shane van Gisbergen on track during the NASCAR Cup Series at Talladega. This weekend marks van Gisbergen\u2019s fifth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":944747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,9909,85],"class_list":["post-944746","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-shane-van-gisbergen","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944746","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=944746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/944746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/944747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=944746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=944746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=944746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}