Shane van Gisbergen made it look easy again. Last weekend at Watkins Glen International, he cruised to his fourth NASCAR Cup Series victory of 2025, and he remains undefeated in the last four Cup Series road course races. At the moment, the field does not have an answer for SVG.
However, the Cup Series playoffs will begin in a few weeks, and that could be the field’s best opportunity for revenge. While van Gisbergen has been dominant on road courses, he has not been a contender on any ovals. He and the No. 88 team still find themselves 25th in overall points, and his only top-10 finishes this year have been in the five road course races. Drivers with those kinds of stats typically make an early exit from the postseason.
Yet SVG has another factor that works to his advantage: an abundance of playoff points. By winning at Watkins Glen, he brought his guaranteed total up to 22. If van Gisbergen was to win either of the next two races or any of their stages, that number could go up, but the most likely scenario is that he will begin the postseason with 22 playoff points. The only drivers who have banked more than that are Denny Hamlin with 24 and Kyle Larson with 23. If you were to factor in additional playoff points for the overall top 10 in the regular season standings, Hamlin’s total increases to 32 and Larson’s to 29, while William Byron and Christopher Bell also surpass van Gisbergen with 32 and 24 playoff points respectively. Still, potentially beginning the postseason with the fifth most playoff points would give SVG a nice leg up, especially in the first round.
Seeing van Gisbergen reach the playoffs is not a surprise. Even with his lack of experience in the Cup Series, it stood to reason that he could win at least one road course race and lock himself in. The logical follow-up was that SVG would almost certainly get knocked out of the playoffs in the Round of 16. But that prediction was based on the assumption that the No. 88 would have earned one or two wins at best, and that SVG’s playoff points would be of little consequence. More than four wins’ worth of playoff points changes the game significantly.
Going back to 2017, there has never been an instance of a driver beginning the postseason with at least 20 playoff points and failing to advance out of the first round. The driver with the most playoff points eliminated in the history of the Round of 16 was Ryan Blaney in 2020. He took 13 playoff points into the postseason, but finishes of 24th, 19th and 13th prevented him from advancing. Fans also might remember how Martin Truex Jr. began the 2023 playoffs with results of 18th, 36th and 19th, but having 36 playoff points saved him from elimination.
A couple more examples that are relevant to van Gisbergen’s case are Byron in 2024 and Kyle Busch in 2021. Byron went into last season’s playoffs with exactly 22 playoff points. He finished a strong seventh in the first race, but a 34th-place result in the second race dropped him to 10th in points. The No. 24 team could only manage a 17th place in the third race, but that was still good enough for Byron to get through.
Busch’s 2021 postseason also began with exactly 22 playoff points. He crashed out of the first race and ended up 35th. Busch then finished ninth in the second race but was only eight points above the cutoff. The final race of the first round was at Bristol Motor Speedway, and Busch uncharacteristically struggled to a 21st-place finish, but he did advance to the next round. Just like Byron, he did it with a top 10, one really bad finish and one mid-pack finish.
Could van Gisbergen follow the same path as Byron and Busch? The first round of the playoffs this year includes the Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, World Wide Technology Raceway (WWTR), and the Bristol Night Race. SVG’s previous Darlington results of 26th and 20th are nothing special, but he did earn a top 10 there in the Xfinity Series last year. Van Gisbergen has never raced at WWTR before, although the track’s tight, flat corners sometimes favor drivers with road course experience.
If SVG should fear any track in the Round of 16, it is Bristol. His only Cup Series start there came earlier this year, and he recorded a 38th-place finish. Last year in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, he finished 18th in Thunder Valley. Bristol is such a unique experience, especially to someone with a road racing background like SVG, that there is no real way to prepare for the race other than being in the thick of the action. Van Gisbergen may have playoff points on his side, but counting on him to get good results at Darlington and WWTR if things go wrong at Bristol is a big ask.
Yet if SVG does catch a few breaks and gets to the second round, things get easier. The Round of 12 concludes at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL, and SVG has to be the favorite to win there now. Yes, NASCAR’s more tenured drivers have more experience there, but that is what everyone said about Watkins Glen, and the No. 88 beat the field handedly there too. All he would have to do is win the ROVAL, and nothing else matters in the Round of 12. Advancing even further to the championship race is not a reasonable possibility, but reaching the Round of 8 should not be out of the question for van Gisbergen. Such an advancement would be a huge accomplishment for him and Trackhouse Racing, who took a chance on him when bringing SVG to the Cup Series still felt like a gamble.
Van Gisbergen is going to be a great case study of how much playoff points matter in the Round of 16. History says that he has enough to avoid elimination, but when the pressure is on, can NASCAR’s new road course phenom run with the world’s best oval racers?
Bryan began writing for Frontstretch in 2016. He has penned Up to Speed for the past eight years. A lifelong student of auto racing, Bryan is a published author and automotive historian. He is a native of Columbus, Ohio and currently resides in Southern Kentucky.