Just by nature of the NASCAR calendar, we got to see the Cup Series‘ best and brightest road racers in action at COTA for the first time during the season in early March … and then we push the road courses to the recesses of our minds for the next 10 weeks as other tracks come and go. When they finally come back around in late spring — at Mexico City last year, or Watkins Glen this past weekend — we are suddenly confronted again with an unshakeable reality:
Shane van Gisbergen is really, really good at road racing.
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Last year, this annual dawning of “SVG season” meant van Gisbergen automatically punched his ticket to the 2025 NASCAR Playoffs with his dominating, near-perfect win in Mexico. (He‘d also go on to add three more wins on road/street courses before the regular season was done.) Because of this, SVG had a shot at coming within a round of the championship if he‘d managed to survive the Round of 16 to make use of his skills at the Charlotte Roval. And it all began around this point on the calendar.
This year, despite perhaps an even more dominant run at The Glen, things are a bit more complicated. With the elimination of win-and-in playoff qualifications, SVG‘s win did nothing more than add points to his tally in the standings. But it did push him over 50% odds to make The Chase in my simulator model, which uses predicted Driver Ratings by track type to simulate the remainder of the regular season 10,000 times, tracking how often each driver finishes in the top 16 and keeps their title hopes alive past the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona in late August.
As things stand now, van Gisbergen ranks 16th in the points — meaning he currently owns the very last Chase spot with 14 races left before the push for the Cup title officially begins. Of those 14 races, two are at street or road courses: the brand-new San Diego street circuit at Naval Base Coronado on June 21 and the annual trip to Sonoma Raceway a week later on June 28.
Van Gisbergen will automatically be a heavy favorite at both of those tracks, and he‘ll need to cash in on both chances to maintain a steady trajectory toward The Chase. According to the simulations, San Diego and Sonoma are, along with North Wilkesboro, a short track where he could pick up ground by exceeding expectations, his highest “leverage” remaining races, in terms of how much the result could swing his Chase odds. But if you look at the particulars, you see that most of the leverage is tied up in how much downside there is if he doesn‘t have a strong run:
There‘s certainly upside, too: If he wins the two remaining road/street courses, SVG‘s odds to make The Chase soar to 86%. But if he doesn‘t score at least one win in those races, his odds to make The Chase drop to 44%; if he doesn‘t score at least one top five, they fall to 36%. Even only one top five leaves him at 53%. So while the pressure is on every driver to secure strong finishes at the races where they are expected to do best, nobody is more extreme in this regard than van Gisbergen, because nobody has such an extreme split in performance by track type as he does.
Beyond the road races, though, SVG also needs some level of performance at the other track types to bolster his Chase chances. For instance, in simulations where he has zero top-five finishes at non-road courses, he only makes The Chase 34% of the time. Or when he only scores a couple of top 10s in those races, his odds sit at 42%.
The good news for van Gisbergen is that he has been improving on ovals in each of his first few seasons as a Cup regular. His average per-race Driver Ratings are up across the board in 2026 relative to his previous career marks, increasing by 6.3 points at ovals, by 12.5 points at short tracks and by a whopping 21.4 points at drafting-style tracks:
Although that newfound form still doesn‘t make him an average driver at non-road or street courses, every little bit of improved experience and skill matters at the margins.
If SVG‘s formula for making The Chase is to contend at — and, in the best cases, win — both San Diego and Sonoma, then shore up his odds with several top 10s (or even a stray top five) elsewhere as an insurance policy, that ought to leave him in an enviable place when it comes to at least earning a spot in the 16-driver Chase field.
Once there, without a single road course in the mix — after the Roval date was scrapped in favor of the normal Charlotte oval — it‘s hard to envision van Gisbergen being a major player for the actual championship against names like Tyler Reddick, Denny Hamlin, Ryan Blaney, Chase Elliott, Christopher Bell and Kyle Larson. But in a system that no longer lets him shortcut his way into the postseason through sheer road-racing dominance, getting there at all would still mean something to his growing resume as an all-around driver, not just a road-course specialist who dominates a few weekends per year.
