1. If the NASCAR Title Was Decided on Unfamiliar Road Courses, SVG Would Certainly Take It
There was a time in the final stage of the Viva Mexico 250 in Mexico City that it looked like someone other than Shane van Gisbergen might end up taking the checkered flag. It wasn’t the gastrointestinal issues he was suffering, but rather a nagging doubt the Kiwi driver had about whether his crew might not have tightened all the lug nuts on his No. 88 Chevrolet on what turned out to be his final pit stop.
Turns out none of those wheels were loose, which meant no one had anything for him. Christopher Bell finished second, but at 16.567 seconds back, he may as well have been in a different estado.
This was a whooping the best stock car drivers in the world rarely experience. SVG has been pretty awful on ovals in his first full NASCAR Cup Series campaign, but on a road course where no one in the field had any prior experience, he was simply on another level. There’s a saying in boxing and MMA that styles make fights, and while there’s no exact parallel in stock car racing, this was as textbook an example as there is of that concept.
We’ve seen this from him before. Van Gisbergen famously won his first-ever Cup Series start, claiming victory in the inaugural Chicago Street Race two years ago. He doesn’t win every road or street race, of course, which suggests his advantage over the rest of the garage is lessened once everyone gets some laps at the non-oval circuits under their belts.
It does beg the question, though: if the Cup Series was mostly run on non-ovals, including some new courses each year, would van Gisbergen be its champion? There’s enough evidence now to think he probably would, meaning all the other drivers can be thankful those ovals exist and are pretty damn popular.
2. Yet People Are Focusing on the Wrong Part of His Impressive Victory
With his Mexico City triumph, van Gisbergen will now be part of the playoffs this year. You’re likely already aware of this fact since:
- The current ‘win and you’re in’ playoff system has been around for a while now, and …
- Commentators have been discussing how SVG’s win has shaken up the playoff field breathlessly pretty much since he crossed the start/finish line in Mexico.
There are two things that make this type of over-analysis a little grating. Yes, van Gisbergen is likely to keep someone from making the postseason field, and it’ll be someone who would be considered more deserving if we consider strictly where they end up in points in a few months.
Honestly, though, is van Gisbergen’s situation much different than when Harrison Burton won at Daytona International Speedway just last year? Burton locked himself in and Chris Buescher ended up missing out. Neither of them would have won the championship, so it mattered little (except to Buescher, his team and his fans, granted). Nothing will be different this year.
The other thing is that van Gisbergen earned his win by schooling 37 other drivers south of the border. It was no fluke, and the NASCAR playoff system is what it is. Let’s just enjoy the show he put on and save the playoff handwringing for later.
3. Will There Now Be a Race to Find the Next SVG?
Now, here is an interesting hypothetical to come out of what we just saw van Gisbergen pull off. Finding drivers who can master wheeling stock cars around all kinds of tracks with high proficiency is hard. Finding someone who can be so-so on ovals but is a whiz on road courses? That figures to be at least marginally easier.
To be clear, this isn’t a discussion about road course ringers, as fun as it is to see an extra car run now and then. No, this is about whether a Cup Series team might consider an additional full-time seat for someone who may struggle a bit on ovals but be a real threat to win a road course race and make the playoffs.
I wouldn’t profess to know enough about other forms of racing to know who might fit that description, though there are colleagues here who would. The guess is the costs involved would likely make this a non-starter for most teams, as well as the uncertainty over how many road courses will be on the Cup Series schedule from year to year.
But NASCAR, like all pro sports, can be a bit of a copycat affair, and if SVG continues to win his way into the playoffs for another year or two, it’s not crazy to think someone else might try to duplicate the tactic that Trackhouse has employed.
4. The Stadium Portion of the Mexico City Layout Was Awesome
No real commentary here, just my impressions of the stadium portion of Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. It was easily the most breathtaking visual I have seen in racing in quite some time.
One of my friends said it looked like something out of a dystopian future version of racing, and perhaps it did have a little Hunger Games vibe. There’s certainly nothing quite like it anywhere else — literally true since it used to be a baseball stadium until renovations to the circuit sent the track through a cutout in the stands — and the views of it during the NASCAR Xfinity Series and Cup Series races will stay with me for quite some time.
5. Are We Honestly, For Real, Getting a Days of Thunder Sequel?
Jeff Gordon thinks so. While Tom Cruise has mentioned as recently as last month that his team has been kicking around ideas for a Days of Thunder 2 treatment, Gordon cranked up the anticipation even more in an interview this week.
“I mean, all I can say is … I’ve known Tom [Cruise] for many years, and was on set this past year for Mission: Impossible, and then I went to the premiere,” Gordon told Mandy Curi of Road & Track. “And the first word out of his mouth is, ‘We’re doing it. We’re doing Days of Thunder 2.'”
A sequel to a movie from 35 years ago would once be seen as a fool’s errand, but Cruise has already proven that logic wrong with Top Gun: Maverick. I’m not quite as optimistic as Gordon that a new movie would do much to move the needle in terms of boosting NASCAR’s visibility or cultural cachet, but it certainly couldn’t hurt.
Hopefully Gordon stays on the case and gives racing fans a heads up if and when the movie gets the official green light.
