Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: Shane van Gisbergen, who returns to Watkins Glen International this week as the defending winner of the road course race. This interview has been edited and condensed, but the full version is available on the 12 Questions Podcast.
1. Do you typically arrive for things early, late or on time, and why?
I normally just aim for the time. I’ve got to get there. I guess I don’t like getting to things early and having to wait around. But then you don’t want to piss people off being late either.
2. What is the pettiest thing that annoys you during a race weekend?
Pettiest … good question. I don’t know. I don’t have anything on my list that relates to that question.
You’re just more of a roll-with-the-punches type guy?
Yeah, just accept how it is.
3. What is something you’ve learned to stop explaining to people?
Justifying bad weekends. Especially here — you can run 20th to 30th and have a decent day, but people are just better here. Everyone at home (in New Zealand) wonders what’s going on and expects so much out of you, but it’s hard to explain how good and how close everyone is here, especially on ovals.
I had a friend come to Kansas a couple weeks ago, and I just said, “For qualifying, go down to Turn 1 and stand there. It’ll blow you away.” And yeah, he couldn’t believe it — how fast we go and how much the cars are moving around, on edge. You have to see it to understand. I don’t think TV does a good job of that.
Honestly, even being up high in the press box, you still don’t get it. Then sometimes when I’m walking through the tunnel by Turn 1 and the cars are just screaming by — the difference between being up high in the stands or close to the fence is like, whoa …
Even when we’re watching qualifying from the car and seeing guys sailing past into Turn 1, it’s like, “S—, these guys are ripping.” Then you’ve got to go do it yourself. It’s pretty cool.
4. If you could go back to the early days before you reached the top level in Supercars, what is one different decision you wish you had made?
I had a chance to go race A1GP at the time — the nation-versus-nation single-seater stuff (drivers represented their countries in open-wheel cars). The Giltrap family, who still support me now, had me in the single-seater classes in New Zealand, and the next step was to go overseas and race in A1GP.
But at that time, V8 Supercars was massive, and that’s what I always wanted to do. So I chose that, and it worked out well — I went straight into the main Supercars series (where he went on to win three Supercars championships and 80 races).
5. What is it like to be in a debrief after a bad race?
We’ve had a few of them lately. It’s hard, and it gets harder. The last three weeks (before Texas) we’ve had bad ones, and you know you’ve got to turn the page Monday night and focus on the next week, but it gets harder to do that.
I feel like this year we’ve got a good group of people around us, so it’s still a good vibe, but yeah — it’s hard when you have a bad day. You’ve got to not finger-point, but try to understand what happened.
It takes a bit to blame yourself sometimes, or to accept when it’s you that made the problem. But I think I’ve gotten better at that.
Shane van Gisbergen takes the checkered flag last August in the Cup Series race at Watkins Glen. He’ll be a favorite to defend his victory this weekend. (Sean Gardner / Getty Images)
6. I’m asking each driver two wild-card questions: One about the past and one about the present. On last year’s 12 Questions interview, you said the most miserable you’d ever been inside a race car was the last year you raced Supercars, because you hated that car. Now in Formula 1 this year, we are hearing drivers say similar things about how much they dislike their new cars, and we once heard that in NASCAR as well. So from a driver’s standpoint, what makes a race car enjoyable to drive?
For me, I want a raw car where the driver is the limit. You can push yourself and go a little bit harder and keep getting lap time out of it.
Some cars, you’re just driving to the limit of what you’ve got, and you don’t have any tools — whether it’s your skills or in-car adjustments — to make it better. You’re just stuck with whatever you’ve got. I call those “engineer’s cars.” You’re driving what they’ve given you, and you’re stuck at that level. You don’t have any ability to make a difference.
But cars like these (NASCAR’s Next Gen cars), where the faster you go, the more downforce you make, where you can search for grip — that’s what I like. You can do things to make it better.
It’s interesting, my comments (about the Supercars) are similar to what the F1 car is going (through), or (NASCAR’s) Car of Tomorrow or even this (Next Gen) car when it first came out with the older guys (disliking it). So it happens everywhere. For me, change was good (going from Supercars to NASCAR), but maybe if I’d gone from the old car to this car (in NASCAR), I’d feel the same way.
7. In terms of the present, Trackhouse is struggling right now, but you’re also trying to keep learning your craft on ovals. (Have) the team’s difficulties this year affected your ability to learn oval racing, or can you still keep learning at the pace you need to despite not having a fast car?
It’s a bit of both. I know my teammate in the 1 car (Ross Chastain) is capable of winning races, so when we’re battling, I use him as a reference and a yardstick to see where I’m really at.
It’s a hard one, because I’m still learning, but I’ve had enough time now to know what a good car should feel like, so hopefully I can help direct us to be better. But there are weeks where all three of us are out to lunch, and it’s difficult. So I’ve just got to remember I’ve got good teammates and base my speed off of them when it’s tough as well.
8. If you could get any driver’s helmet in the history of motorsports, whose would it be?
I’m trying to do a swap with Scotty (McLaughlin, his former Supercars competitor who now races IndyCar). We wanted to do a Supercars-era one from when we battled each other, but we’ve both given those away. So I think we’re going to swap Daytona 24 helmets from when we raced together.
He’s probably the main one I want. I just like swapping with friends or people I become close with.
I’m also thinking about starting to do race suits. Because that’s a bit easier. Helmets are pretty special — you only get one or two a year — but you get a lot of race suits, especially here with all the different sponsors.
9. When things aren’t going well, do you prefer people leave you alone or check in on you?
Leave me alone. Especially after a bad week — we have our meetings Monday, but after that I just stay away from the world, hang out with the dogs or my wife, and chill out. Normally, I’m good by Tuesday — or Wednesday if it was a really bad week.
10. What is something about yourself that would surprise people who think they know you?
I like being someone where people know enough, but not everything. In this world, people have too much access to you or expect too much access. I like having that unknown and being able to get away. I like people not knowing.
Away from the track, I’m a pretty different person, but I feel like people know me enough at race weekends — and that’s part of my job. But I like being able to switch that part of my life off during the week.
11. What is something you laugh about now that was absolutely not funny at the time?
My first Melbourne Grand Prix with my teammates — my father-in-law was my team boss at the time, and we had a rule: no hitting, no touching.
The three of us were battling for the lead, I pulled a good pass on my teammate and kind of propped it up so he couldn’t cut back on me. He tapped me on corner exit and chipped his headlight — it was nothing.
But then afterward, we got absolutely screamed at. The beatdown we got from him for crashing … it was a Formula One weekend, big Red Bull race and sponsors, and even though we finished 1-2-3, we got slammed for it.
I can laugh with him now about it, but at the time I was like, “Oh s—” because I thought it was a great race and I won. But he went crazy at all of us. Learned pretty quick to give my teammates a bit of extra room that day.
12. Each week, I ask a driver to give me a question for the next person. The last one was Bubba Wallace, and he said: Who is someone you’d like to have a heart-to-heart talk with, friend or foe, and why?
Probably my main friends back home. I don’t get to do it enough anymore. When I go home, it’s a whirlwind trip, and you’re catching up with people, but you don’t get time for those (deeper) conversations like you used to. Being on the other side of the world, it’s just harder to talk with those guys as much as I used to.