Shane van Gisbergen, driver of the No. 97 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet and the No. 9 JR Motorsports Chevrolet, met with the media in advance of running double-duty in the NASCAR Cup and O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series at Circuit of The Americas.<\/p>\n
Media Availability Quotes:<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve seen the stats, but if you win this week, you\u2019ll tie Jeff Gordon for the most road courses in a row. What would that mean to you?<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, first, afternoon, everyone. Yeah, it\u2019d be pretty cool. Kevin Harvick, I did an interview with him the other day, and he brought that up, so it\u2019d be cool to do that. Very different time with a lot more races per year, but I guess as a crew, last year we had an amazing year and it\u2019d be awesome to carry that on this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
It seems like at COTA, you\u2019re human, you haven\u2019t won here yet\u2026 so what makes this place so tricky?<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019s a tough track, and I think it\u2019s also an easy track. You see the gaps between cars are a lot closer, so it\u2019s more down to executing, not making mistakes and qualifying well. I think you don\u2019t see a big field spread like other tracks, talent-wise. And last year, COTA was only the third or fourth race again, too. So yeah, very new crew within Trackhouse. I made some mistakes. We weren\u2019t quite there yet as a team early in the year, so hopefully that compounds and we\u2019re a bit stronger this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
With the change to the Chase, as opposed to the \u201cwin and you\u2019re in\u201d, on road courses, do you anticipate any different decisions, where people are going to pit early to try to make a contention for the win late, as opposed to staying up and getting points in the stages?<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, it\u2019ll definitely change that dynamic. And especially on this track, you have a short amount of time really that you have to be close to the leader to have that extra lap to decide if you\u2019re going to pit or not, so hopefully you\u2019re in the lead or close and you can decide. But it\u2019s definitely going to change, I think, how many people flip stages. You know, the points are so important this year, and it might even change us. If we\u2019re not the dominant car, you might sacrifice the stage to get the points. Yeah, it\u2019s all about points accumulation for us this year.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a wildly different note, I know when you were in New Zealand doing a competition with \u2018Mad\u2019 Mike Whiddett and Liam Lawson. I was just curious, is that the first time that you\u2019ve jumped a lawnmower?<\/p>\n
\u201cOn a lawnmower? Yeah, and I wouldn\u2019t recommend that (laughs). But it was a lot of fun playing around with those guys. At Red Bull, we do some pretty cool stuff. It was awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n
I think of you as at least somewhat of a semi-private person, and you opened your life up to this documentary that\u2019s coming out. Was that hard for you to sort of open up on everything\u2026 your family and have all that stuff out there?<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I don\u2019t really like doing it, I guess. In this day and age, people have so much access to you. I love people knowing more about my racing life, but I love going away, going home and no one knowing what I do, as well, is kind of cool.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s still some things you like to keep private, but it was cool to show off our cars, I guess; my relationship with Dad and how much fun we still have hanging out. Yeah, I think he talked a lot about mom and stuff, so yeah, it was pretty cool\u2026. (inaudible).\u201d<\/p>\n
I just want to get your general thoughts on the track here (at COTA). We touched on it earlier, you won on every road course last year except for this one, so does that make you even hungrier to win here?<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I do like the track. I love coming here. The weather\u2019s a bit nicer than where we\u2019re living. But yeah, it\u2019s an odd track with how much grip is off the track. You know, you see everyone blowing the corners to try and get the grip off the track. It\u2019s very different the way you drive. The restart zone is pretty chaotic into turn one\u2026 how wide it is, you know, it\u2019s crazy. But yeah, we just have to hopefully have two good races and try and get some results.<\/p>\n
But yeah, I like the place, I just haven\u2019t managed to put a whole race together. I think every race I\u2019ve done here in NASCAR, I\u2019ve been reasonably quick, but for one reason or another, I haven\u2019t managed to get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Have you had a chance to enjoy Austin while you\u2019re here? Maybe food, music, you name it\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, we\u2019re going to Trackhouse Live tonight in town to have a look. I remember when I was here for the V8 Supercars race, I stayed an extra few days and went to some barbecue places and some hot rod shops. It was cool. But yeah, nowadays, we\u2019re kind of in and out. It\u2019s hard to look around, but I don\u2019t mind this place.\u201d<\/p>\n
You mentioned, of course, the track is shortened. You\u2019ve seen races here on the full course. Do you prefer one over the other?<\/p>\n
\u201cI like the short track, yeah. The long track was great, too. But I think doing more laps, you get more chances to pass the crowd and better passing opportunities, too. It\u2019s a lot more technical, I think, the sections that they\u2019ve done. We haven\u2019t really missed much by doing a shorter track, so I think it was a good thing. I think it was a good thing they listened and did the next cut through rather than the one we did in Supercars. It made for some pretty good racing and good passing last year.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no secret about the expectation that this is going to be a duel between you and Connor (Zilisch). I was wondering if you could kind of size up that matchup. And also, who else do you expect to be really at the front? You know, Tyler (Reddick) is going for history, and he\u2019s won here before\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I think on road course weekends, I find there\u2019s probably six to eight guys that you see consistently up there and guys that are really highly good to race. You just don\u2019t know in NASCAR. Everything\u2019s so close. It\u2019s who nails it on the weekend with preparation. And, yeah, there\u2019s always some good drivers up front.<\/p>\n
And with Connor (Zilisch), it\u2019s exciting, too. Pretty cool talent coming into this level now and obviously in the same equipment as me, too, so it\u2019s going to be good. And as Justin (Marks) said in the meeting we had earlier in the week, we\u2019re in a pretty cool position as a team. It\u2019s special. We\u2019ve got to take advantage of it and make sure we get it right and one of us needs to win, which would be cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
This new 750 horsepower package, somewhat similar to the old Supercar days. Is that going to play in your wheelhouse, or do you still need some more practice with the 750 to figure out how close it\u2019s going to be?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, the Supercar had less, actually. They had 640, 650. But, yeah, I haven\u2019t really noticed it so far. At Bowman Gray, you couldn\u2019t really use the power, I guess. But, yeah, with tomorrow being hot and slick, you\u2019ll probably notice the power then and certainly fight for rear tire life. But, yeah, I don\u2019t know. I haven\u2019t really noticed it so far.\u201d<\/p>\n
GM PR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shane van Gisbergen, driver of the No. 97 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet and the No. 9 JR Motorsports Chevrolet,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1168,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,10660,7574,4385,9397,25423,12716,634,7577,582,721,82],"class_list":["post-504586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chase","tag-chevrolet","tag-jeff-gordon","tag-jr-motorsports","tag-kevin-harvick","tag-motorsports","tag-nascar","tag-qualifying","tag-racing","tag-series","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}