NASCAR CUP SERIES
CHARLOTTE ROVAL
TEAM CHEVY DRIVER QUOTES
OCTOBER 4, 2025
Shane van Gisbergen, driver of the No. 88 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet, met with the media in advance of the NASCAR Cup Series practice and qualifying session at the Charlotte Motor Speedway Road Course. Van Gisbergen heads into the weekend with four-straight road course wins in NASCAR’s top division.
Media Availability Quotes:
You’ve got to be feeling pretty confident heading into this weekend. What are you looking forward to most about coming back to the ROVAL?
“Good morning, everyone. It’s great to be here at another road course. Good momentum from the last couple of weeks. It’s been going really well. Looking forward to it. Hopefully, just have a good, clean weekend and come away with another great result. It would be really cool.”
With this being a road course, you’re obviously the favorite and everything. But it’s also an elimination race and guys are going to get desperate. Do you feel like this may go through you for a guy to advance in? How are you preparing for maybe more aggressiveness that comes down to it at the end?
“I think so. Watching last year’s race, in Turn Seven and the clown show that went on a few times (laughs). It’ll be pretty crazy. Hopefully, you’re out front. That’s the best spot to be.
Obviously, there’ll be a lot of guys with yellow spoilers trying to get great results and trying to advance themselves on, so you just have to be mindful of them. I just have to do my own thing and respect their race, but try to get the best result I can for us, too. Hopefully, being up front is the best place to be out of trouble.”
Was there any extra help with Ross Chastain this week? Maybe help him with his road course skills a little bit more?
“We normally work together pretty close on the road courses anyway. He sat in on one of my sim sessions and I sat in on one of his last week. We just bounce ideas off each other. Our car setups are normally pretty close on road courses, so we try and work together. Any questions he has, I answer them. It goes the other way on ovals, too. I’m happy to pay it back this week.”
I know precision is where you excel on all these different road courses and street courses. Does it change at all with the big turtles that you’re going up over, slamming back down onto the racing surface?
“Yeah, you still have to be precise. You have to hit them with the right angle. You’re generally pretty aggressive on how you drive the car and how you treat the car. It feels pretty rough. The backstretch chicane, in particular, and the frontstretch lap this year I think will still be rough, but not as rough as last year. You can’t cut it as much with the bundle that they put. I think that’s a pretty good resolution they’ve come up with. It stops the question of cutting too much, but also, it’s quite violent on the car if you abuse it.
I think it’s a pretty good thing they’ve done there. But, yeah, you still have to be precise here. It’s a hard track to get things right, but you can grab the car by the scruff of the neck, too, and send it pretty hard.”
We’ve talked to you a lot about your growth and improvement on the ovals this year. I’m just curious, how much better do you feel like you’ve gotten on the road courses with this car and with another year? Are you making gains? Obviously not maybe as big a gain as ovals, but are you making gains? Or are you the same guy that was here last year?
“I like to think I’m getting better, yeah. Certainly, I’m learning a lot more working with the same team. Last year, the car would be prepared at Trackhouse, then given to Kaulig Racing to run. I feel like this year, I’ve been able to have some influence and guidance on the setup. We’ve gone a bit of a different way this year. It’s something I thought would be better and it has worked. It’s been cool to just grow and develop the car. Last year, we just ran a basic setup and I just drove it every couple of months. Whereas this year, being in the car all the time, I feel like I’ve learned what the car needs and been able to make the car better and hopefully adapt my style to it, as well.
I think I’ve gotten better and the car’s gotten better and the results have shown that.”
How does this course challenge you in different ways than the other road courses this season?
“I don’t think it does. It’s got similar parts everywhere to tracks we’ve had. I think it’s a pretty good combination of slow and high-speed corners. The only thing here is the curbs. You’ve got to have good recovery over the curbs and how quick the car settles down. That’s probably the unique thing from other tracks. I think the combinations of all the corners are pretty similar to other tracks. The oval part is only a little dodgy at Turn Four when you’re at full speed. It’s on the ground and on the road blocks. It’s pretty loose the first couple of laps until they wear away. It’s a pretty cool little track.”
When you compare the bumpiness of this particular road course to others, especially the part of it that goes from the oval onto the new extensions on the road courses, how much of a difference of a road course is this one from other ones that you go to?
“Have you seen Chicago? (Laughs) Yeah, this is nothing compared to that and some of the street tracks I’ve been to. This is a pretty smooth track, really.”
How do you compare the bumpiness, in general, with the ROVAL? It’s just a unique track..
“I think it’s kind of mid-range. You go around the banking, but it’s easy flat. It’s kind of a straight. It’s unique, I guess, because you’re using the oval, but really the rest of the track is pretty standard, it feels like to me.”
Depending on who you listen to this week, whether it’s drivers or media preview shows, it just seems like some are just ready to give you the trophy tomorrow afternoon. Is that too presumptuous, or do you feel like this race will go through you again?
“No, I think there’s always good people. I really look at the 5 and the 20 normally on road courses, and then every other week, there’s someone else that steps up. There’s a lot of guys trying to get into the next round that will be stepping up, as well.
I think obviously we’re one of the favorites, but there’s going to be some quick cars, so I really don’t see it’s going to be an easy race. It’s going to be difficult, and yeah, we’re prepared well, so hopefully we’re up there fighting for it.”
You put a lot of attention and energy into what you do, and sometimes it’s overshadowed that SVG is going to win at the ROVAL because he’s a master at this, versus what you put into preparing and whatnot. Can you talk about that? It seems like it’s almost expected that you’re going to win here, when people don’t really see everything that you do to work on it and the competition?
“Yeah, I still have to work really hard to be good at it. This track is nice because I’ve been here before. I’m not starting from a clean slate. I raced here last year in both classes and sort of know how the track races and what I needed to do better from last year, so that’s certainly a help. But yeah, I try and study as much as I can, but I feel like I study a lot more at Ovals than road courses at the moment. These weeks are a bit of a holiday, as I always say. It’s pretty fun to come and do these.”
So it is easy for you? You can sort of shut one eye and go for it, right?
“It is never easy, but it’s easier at ovals.”
Related to courses you’ve raced at over the years, how difficult is this track? What would you change on it if you could to make it more interesting?
“I’ve never raced on it before in the old configuration, but yeah, as a driver, you hate Turn Seven. But as a fan, you love it. And I guess if you’re trying to make passes, it’s an amazing passing zone. So yeah, I think the way they’ve reconfigured the backstretch chicane and the frontstretch chicane, they’ve made more passing zones, which is great for racing. Yeah, it’s not the most exciting track to drive, but it’s pretty cool to race.”
In spite of the fact you’ve worked really hard to adapt to the stock car, how much of this is really just natural, God-given ability from what you’ve been doing your whole career, going all the way back to Supercars?
“Yeah, this is what I’ve grown up doing. You know, like I jump on a road course, and I’m on it within a couple of laps, you know? Whereas that’s what most of these guys are like on ovals. So yeah, it’s just my background and experience. I feel like they probably look at me the way I look at them on an oval, so it’s just a good week for me.”
How satisfying was it to get your first top-10 on an oval last week?
“Yeah, it was awesome, especially after New Hampshire. We probably should have had a great result there, and it didn’t work out. We had a little penalty for a mistake, and then, yeah, having to be a lap down, or two laps down, we ended up, and coming back was really cool. It was pretty genuine, the speed, as well. We were ahead of most of the crashes, and having a really good day. So, yeah, I was pretty excited. I’ve never been so excited for a top-10, but this series is tough on the ovals. Everyone’s so good, and it has taken all year for us to get up to speed. It’s just a good reward for everyone who’s helped me to get here, the spotters and crew chief. I think everyone was pretty stoked after that race. It was a cool atmosphere.”
You didn’t even have your crew chief, so it’s even more of an accomplishment. How much does it make you look forward to getting to Las Vegas next week? They’re different intermediates, but it’s still a mile-and-a-half…
“Yeah, definitely. Those big tracks, they’re very, very tough with how fast we go. Just the average speed is pretty crazy.
But yeah, certainly getting more and more comfortable the more I do it. I don’t think we’ve done a mile-and-a-half since we’ve raced here in the middle of the year, so it was good to show a nice bit of improvement, and hopefully that keeps happening; having genuine speed and being able to battle with these guys, not feeling like a fish out of water, is pretty cool.”
In that race at Kansas, you were 11th in green-flag passes, despite being a lap down for most of the first part of the race. Are you prouder of that performance or of the four wins on the road courses?
“I kind of look at the season separately, like the road courses and the ovals, because it definitely tells two stories. But yeah, I certainly felt like I was the most confident I’ve been to move around. Normally, I just get stuck to one line, and I felt like I could run the bottom or the top or the middle and just search for air. It’s taken me a while to learn how to do that; learn to read where the other drivers are going to go in the corners and how to search for it. It’s still pretty new to me, really, when I’m doing those races. So yeah, I’m just evolving, I guess, but I still know I have a long way to go.”
You’ve kind of seen firsthand both perspectives of being inside the playoffs and racing outside the playoffs throughout this postseason now. How did you feel like those non-playoff drivers raced you during that first round, and how conscious are you of that now during the second round now that you’re not in the potential championship?
“Yeah, I guess the time I got spun out or hit a bristle was by people with not a yellow spoiler, so that wasn’t very nice (laughs). But I don’t know… it is what it is. They’re still racing for the best day they can have, and I’ll be the same today. But certainly, I’m not going to purposely ruin someone just to help someone out. I’m aware that Ross needs to fight his way in, but you can’t do anything stupid. You have to respect these guys and try and do the best you can, but I know there’s a bigger picture, as well.
But for us, yeah, we didn’t perform. I felt like we were really getting better and hitting our stride for the playoffs, and then we had three pretty subpar weekends, actually. I didn’t do the best I can, so I didn’t feel like it, but maybe the pressure did get to us. And then as soon as we were out, we started going good again. It’s frustrating how it works, but it’s pretty awesome, the playoffs, and the pressure it puts on everyone. You’ll probably see some crazy stuff tomorrow with people trying to get in, and I think it gives good storylines.”
How do you keep yourself level-headed to the job you have to perform on road courses when the storylines coming in is that wins are kind of a guarantee?
“I don’t think it’s a guarantee in this series. But yeah, I think it’s a nice feeling. I don’t feel any more pressure, but it’s nice people think so high of us now. It’s a cool feeling that everyone knows the 88’s going to be pretty good this weekend. I like that. You certainly feel a pretty good atmosphere in the shop on a road course week. My teammates are strong on road courses, as well.
I don’t think it puts any more pressure or expectation from outside. I guess from other drivers and media, maybe. But yeah, I find it’s a nice feeling to have.”
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