Ambrose is all too aware just how hard it is to get into the Cup Series, let alone fight to be a frontrunner, and winning a race, well that\u2019s nigh on impossible for most. Not for these two racing transtasman cousins, however \u2013 Ambrose won two races and van Gisbergen already has six to his name.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmericans will embrace anybody who\u2019s great. They love a winner and respect winners. They respect winning.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey hold people in high regard who can do things, so if you can survive in Nascar and thrive in Nascar, just like Shane [van Gisbergen] is doing right now, they have all the time for in the world for you. If you\u2019re no good; they won\u2019t even look at you twice,\u201d said Ambrose.<\/p>\n
Anyone who is fast and can consistently win racing a tin top on road courses will do pretty well in Nascar on road courses. However, it\u2019s the ovals that cause problems for anyone who wasn\u2019t brought up on them and raced on them from an early age.<\/p>\n
Nascar is littered with drivers from overseas from many different categories, including Formula One, who just couldn\u2019t get the hang of going left. Stock cars are heavier, meaner and more stubborn than anything in Supercars. They don\u2019t rotate on a wish; they demand persuasion. The tracks \u2013 especially the ovals \u2013 reorder a driver\u2019s senses. Every corner is the same until it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
The relentless rhythm of Nascar, the draft etiquette, the aerodynamics of dirty air, the chess of stage racing, the brutality of green-white-checkered finishes turn road-course brilliance into just one tool in a very messy toolbox. Nascar isn\u2019t just another category or championship with different decals. It\u2019s a different language.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was in Nascar there were only two road races a year. There are a lot more these days and Shane\u2019s been able to show his talent. I\u2019ve been watching him on ovals and he\u2019s doing amazing because I know how hard it is.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe cars are going ridiculously fast; the banking of the corners is ridiculously steep and the loads going through the car are enormous. Not only that, but you\u2019ve also got the car set up asymmetrically.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you go oval racing not one wheel is set up the same, so the car is basically four individual tyres, doing four individual things and you\u2019re trying to work it all out as you drive around the racetrack.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hardest part of driving an oval is holding it straight because it doesn\u2019t want to stay straight. It wants to spin out on the straightaways and people don\u2019t realise that when you\u2019re in the middle of an oval corner it turns itself in. It\u2019s a very unique discipline. It\u2019s very difficult to do and no two laps are the same because the tyres are wearing out so fast.<\/p>\n
\u201cNascar drivers grew up doing it from 12 years of age racing midgets. Shane\u2019s done it and doing that now, which is a fantastic idea to get better at this stuff [ovals],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Van Gisbergen is a racer\u2019s racer and has had success in a wide range of categories. Ambrose reckons van Gisbergen\u2019s desire to race anything at any time is what makes him so special. All he wants to do is go racing and it was the short Supercars calendar that spurred the New Zealander to look abroad for more seat time.<\/p>\n
He couldn\u2019t have picked a better championship than Nascar, with its 36 races, and if you want to do more, a driver can also have go at the Xfinity or even the Craftsman Truck series.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a bigger SVG fan than me. I\u2019ve watched his journey and seen what he\u2019s done, not just in Supercars, but everything that he touches.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s just a pure racer. In America everyone who\u2019s running at the very elite levels are all natural born racers. They live for racing, nothing else really matters. They\u2019d race for free.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not about the money, it\u2019s not about the fame, it\u2019s actually about the battle. Shane is one of those guys, he\u2019s just always about the battle. He just wants to run that race car as fast as he can and beat anybody on that racetrack.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not about fame for him and he\u2019d do it for free. He\u2019s a pure racer so I\u2019m a big SVG fan,\u201d said Ambrose.<\/p>\n
Van Gisbergen has already set many Nascar records, including the most Cup Series wins by a foreign-born driver; the longest streak of road and street course wins by an active driver; being the first New Zealander to win a Cup Series race; notching the most wins in a rookie season; being fastest driver to three wins; and achieving the most consecutive road wins from pole.<\/p>\n
All this just in his first full season in the Cup Series. If van Gisbergen gets a decent handle on racing on an oval, he\u2019s going to be one of the best, as he can balance aggression and calculation as well as anyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cSVG\u2019s going to have a long career regardless of what happens from now on, he\u2019s there. He\u2019s cemented in, he\u2019s respected, and he\u2019s got American race fans. He\u2019s in, he\u2019s got sponsors and he\u2019ll do it for as long as he wants to do it. There\u2019s no doubt. He\u2019s set,\u201d said Ambrose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ambrose is all too aware just how hard it is to get into the Cup Series, let alone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[20299,66038,74,60698,66033,95,214,20438,6636,5759,66037,17898,21526,66035,2740,66034,16773,66039,305,46662,685,3223,9554,66032,9086,13233,20825,111,139,69,90,42309,6744,7798,3512,1436,7228,66036,213,28723,217,3755,11427,9347,23366,102],"class_list":["post-87187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-20299","tag-66038","tag-after","tag-although","tag-ambrose","tag-and","tag-bathurst","tag-brothers","tag-challenge","tag-championships","tag-chat","tag-didnt","tag-finishing","tag-fitting","tag-former","tag-gisbergens","tag-great","tag-hankering","tag-have","tag-headed","tag-last","tag-legend","tag-manage","tag-marcos","tag-mindset","tag-mount","tag-nascar","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-panorama","tag-place","tag-race","tag-racing","tag-rise","tag-shane","tag-sitdown","tag-sports","tag-stone","tag-supercars","tag-third","tag-van","tag-veteran","tag-weekends","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}