Shane van Gisbergen has dominated road course racing in the NASCAR Cup Series over the last 12 months, but if you thought he’d be feeling the weight of expectation as we head to Circuit of the Americas (COTA) this weekend, you’d be mistaken.

The race around the track in Austin, Texas, marks the first road course event of the 2026 season, and heading into the weekend, van Gisbergen is the heavy favorite to win the race. However, you wouldn’t know it based on how he sees things.

The Kiwi is set to take part in both the O’Reilly Auto Parts and Cup Series events this weekend, and is full of confidence having achieved his best-ever result on an oval last time out at Atlanta (6th).

While the traditional oval layout proved to be a thorn in van Gisbergen’s side last season, he has made huge strides in terms of improvement, with two top-10 oval finishes now under his belt after his first at Kansas in the fall.

NASCAR TODAY: Kyle Busch lawsuit update and Cup star addresses Hendrick Motorsports rumors

NASCAR road course races ‘like a holiday’ for SvG

Speaking ahead of this weekend’s action, van Gisbergen has admitted his recent oval progress is promising, and that as the sport prepares to hit its first road course event, despite being the favorite, he’s actually feeling very relaxed, even comparing the road course events to being on a vacation.

“It’s always promising. These oval races, we are making big gains, and we weren’t really in position very often to score stage points last year,” van Gisbergen said ahead of COTA.

“Now we are able to do that in Daytona and Atlanta, and it’s very promising.

“These road courses, we just go and have fun. They are like a holiday for us.

“We just go and enjoy ourselves and hopefully come away with a lot of points and a great result.”

COTA layout means more overtakes

NASCAR will once again run on an altered layout at COTA, having first done so in 2025, which proved to be a hit.

The ‘national’ layout eliminates roughly a mile of the permanent road course’s traditional layout, and shaves a lot of time off lap times. Van Gisbergen says it also means more opportunities to overtake.

“It just gives everyone more passing opportunities and more laps,” he explained.

“You get to use the better part of the track more often. It was cool when NASCAR first thought about doing the shortcut. They wanted to do what we did in V8 Supercars in 2013, and it was terrible through there.

“But what they came up with, using the next cut through, made another passing zone and a pretty tough corner off the backstraight. I thought it was a good change.”

READ MORE: NASCAR lawsuit latest as Chris Gabehart makes explosive Joe Gibbs Racing claims