Shane van Gisbergen celebrates victory in the NASCAR Cup Series at Watkins Glen. Image: Daylon Barr / Red Bull Content Pool
Allmendinder was an oval convert, coming from the Champ Car World Series in the mid-2000s before switching to stock cars.
After debuting in 2007, it took seven years for Allmendinger to win his first Cup Series race at Watkins Glen in 2014.
All three of his Cup Series wins have been on road courses, adding Indianapolis in 2021 and the Charlotte ROVAL in 2024.
Despite becoming something of a force in the second-tier Xfinity Series, winning 18 races across ovals and road courses, Allmendinger is considered by many to be a road course ace.
In 2024, he and van Gisbergen were teammates at Kaulig Racing, where he got to see what made the Kiwi so good on road courses and street circuits.
Speaking on the latest Door Bumper Clear podcast episode, Allmendinger said it’s all down to tyre management.
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“He’s phenomenal, and I got to see this up close and personal last year as my teammate,” said Allmendinger.
“It sounds simple, obviously it’s not, like timing the rolling speed through the middle of the corner and not asking too much of the tyre, but still carrying lots of speed.
“All year, I go study his in-car (footage). If you just sit there and watch his in-car, you’d think he’s the slowest guy on the race track.
“He doesn’t ask too much of it (the tyre). His raw speed, don’t get me wrong, is really good, but we’ve seen guys out-qualify him.”
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Allmendinger cited van Gisbergen’s experience in Supercars on the Dunlop tyre for his innate ability to conserve the Goodyear rubber in NASCAR.
With the Next Gen car, NASCAR moved away from its traditional bias-ply ‘bag’ tyres that are common in stock car racing.
The new tyre is more akin to what is raced globally in Supercars and GT racing with a smaller sidewall.
“He doesn’t abuse the tyre, and I think a lot of that comes from the Supercar series in general because you go watch those races and they leave the pit road and they’re on tyre conservation because they can’t abuse the tyre,” Allmendinger explained.
“The tyres are so skinny there that they immediately overstep the tyre and the tyre is done. That’s how they race that series.
“He can just go in there and roll the speed but not overcharge it. He can get late on the brakes, but he’s not the latest braker. I always felt like I was always out-braking him. He just times that speed into the corner.
“Because of that, it doesn’t make him panic to have to get to the throttle, so he gets his hands really straight off the corners and just gets that forward drive and over time he doesn’t abuse the rear tyres.
“And I think, to me at least, the thing I’ve struggled a little bit with this year is you overstep the tyre a little bit and you heat it up and it doesn’t come back. It’s not like you can cool it down for a couple of laps and all of a sudden you get the speed back. It’s gone. He doesn’t really do that.”
Kaulig Racing’s AJ Allmendinger at Watkins Glen in the #16 Chevrolet Camaro.
Allmendinger joked that van Gisbergen had humiliated NASCAR’s best and even some of the Supercars stars who have tried to emulate his efforts in the United States.
“I was joking with him, maybe after Sonoma, I said ‘You’ve really screwed all these Australian guys and New Zealand guys trying to come over’,” said Allmendiner.
“He said, ‘What do you mean?’ And I’m like, ‘Because they just look at you and just go, oh, he’s smoking everybody, I’m sure we can come over on the road courses and do it’.
“They don’t realise the reason they’re winning races now is because you got tired of kicking their ass and now you want to come over and abuse us.
“So they come over and they’re good, but they’re not amazing. So I’m like, ‘yeah, you’ve screwed that whole series and country. Good job’.”
Off the back of his career-best oval finish in the NASCAR Cup Series at Kansas Speedway where he was 10th, van Gisbergen will turn his attention to the Charlotte ROVAL.
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