Did You Notice? … That Shane van Gisbergen is 34th in NASCAR Cup Series points through seven races, only ahead of full-timers Cole Custer and Cody Ware?
It was clear from the get-go that 2025 would be a learning year for van Gisbergen on ovals, especially on ones that he had yet to tackle in the Next Gen car.
In his first eight oval Cup starts with Kaulig Racing last season, he recorded six finishes outside the top 25. He did shine at Martinsville Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway in the fall, however, posting finishes of 12th and 15th, respectively.
There was still work to be done, but van Gisbergen had improved dramatically on ovals in both Cup and the Xfinity Series as the 2024 season progressed. It seemed reasonable to expect that improvement would only continue as he embarked on his first full-time Cup campaign for 2025.
Instead, all that progress and momentum has gone in the opposite direction. The No. 88 team has an average finish of 31.2 in six oval races this season, and van Gisbergen’s finished 31st or worse in the last four. With a 79-point deficit to the playoff cut line this early in the season, any chance the No. 88 team had in pointing its way to the playoffs is gone; it’s win or bust for van Gisbergen in the next 19 races.
The No. 88 team has shown next to no speed on ovals this year, but what hasn’t helped is that van Gisbergen has been absolutely snakebit to start the year, with incidents in almost every race. In the season-opening Daytona 500, he took damage in a stage two crash and finished in 33rd, eight laps behind the leaders. He finished 23rd after a last-lap crash at Atlanta Motor Speedway and then suffered back-to-back crash DNFs at Phoenix Raceway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
A 32nd-place result at Homestead-Miami Speedway was followed by a 34th in Sunday’s (March 30) Cook Out 400 at Martinsville Speedway, where van Gisbergen finished four laps down after losing a right rear wheel on track after a botched pit stop.
Van Gisbergen’s greatest strength in his 2024 Xfinity season was his ability to close out races. He typically qualified toward the back on ovals and didn’t run very well in the first two stages, but he would improve as the race went on, week after week. It was all but guaranteed that he would go on a run in stage three and finish the race the highest he had run all day, barring any trouble. He was an exceptionally clean racer as well, with only two crash DNFs at Iowa Speedway in July and Talladega in October.
With a crash or mechanical issue not of his own doing nearly every week to start 2025, van Gisbergen hasn’t had the chance to run a clean race and make those mid-race improvements we were accustomed to seeing last year. Even if he’s still on track for the final stage, these aforementioned issues have typically put him so far behind that he’s gained minimal experience in racing his competitors for position.
Trackhouse Racing hasn’t exactly set the world on fire either. Daniel Suarez finished second at Las Vegas, but he otherwise sits 21st in points. Ross Chastain is getting the most out of his No. 1 machine each and every week as always, but the lack of winning speed that plagued the No. 1 team for much of last year is still present. This is also Trackhouse’s first year running three Cup teams in-house (Zane Smith was a Trackhouse driver on loan to Spire Motorsports in 2024), so it wouldn’t be a surprise if expansion difficulties have plagued Trackhouse the same way they’ve plagued RFK Racing — and Brad Keselowski in particular — to start 2025.
If van Gisbergen can string together a series of clean oval races, he’ll begin to find his way. It’s been a rocky start, and it hasn’t been pretty, but he has the talent and skill to right the ship once races start going his way.
The good news for van Gisbergen and the No. 88 team? They’re still at the top of their game for road courses. He shined at Circuit of the Americas in March, leading 23 laps and scoring 14 stage points on the way to a sixth-place finish. Van Gisbergen has been an automatic top-10 finish on road and street courses in Cup when he hasn’t run into trouble, and this year has been no exception.
But in a season that’s already gone awry in more ways than one, a top 10 isn’t enough. Van Gisbergen will need a win, and he certainly had the speed to do so at COTA. He’ll have four more chances — Mexico City, Chicago, Sonoma Raceway and Watkins Glen International — to find victory lane before the playoffs begin in August.
Did You Notice? … Quick hits before taking off…
- It didn’t take long for Denny Hamlin to return to form without long-time crew chief Chris Gabehart, as he scored his sixth Martinsville win — and his first since 2015 — in dominant fashion by leading 274 of the 400 laps. Sunday was the first time since 2010 that Hamlin led 200-plus laps in a Cup win, and he’s now tied with Rusty Wallace for 11th on the all-time win list at 55. The driver up next? Kevin Harvick, with 60.
- It’s been a year of the heavyweights, as Hendrick Motorsports and Joe Gibbs Racing have gone to victory lane in six of the seven races. But just because they’re dominating now doesn’t mean they’ll dominate all season — last year started with Hendrick and JGR winning the first nine races on non-superspeedways, and it finished with 18 drivers finding victory lane.
- Between Ryan Blaney losing two engines and Austin Cindric’s Martinsville exit after Team Penske ran out of batteries, it’s been a rocky start for the defending championship team despite all the laps they’ve spent out front. With JGR suffering a series of engine problems last summer, it will be intriguing to see if Penske’s recent woes will become a blip or the start of a troubling trend.
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf