Van Gisbergen learning NASCAR ropes by ‘driving a forklift’
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Alanis King, Racing columnist
Last summer, three-time Australian Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen shocked the NASCAR world by winning his debut in the top-level Cup Series. It was the first time anyone had done so in 60 years, and it kicked off his whirlwind of a career change: moving to the United States to pursue NASCAR full time.
This summer, he’s four months into his tour as a full-time driver in the second-tier Xfinity Series, where he’s preparing for his eventual move to Cup. What has he learned about the car so far?
“Sometimes it feels like you’re driving a forklift,” he told ESPN.
Van Gisbergen’s NASCAR switch is fascinating for many reasons, including the car. His debut NASCAR victory came on the Chicago Street Course, which he ran with Trackhouse Racing’s “Project91” team, a part-time star car for drivers from other series. It was the perfect storm: It was NASCAR’s first time at a street course, and it happened in the rain — two things that come naturally for Van Gisbergen. That helped level the playing field between him and the drivers who race NASCAR every week.
The Chicago race was meant to be a one-off, and Van Gisbergen told ESPN that he didn’t expect to win, but “stuff just snowballed so quickly” after he did. He soon signed a development contract with Trackhouse, which included running the 2024 season with Kaulig Racing in Xfinity to adapt to NASCAR’s oval-heavy schedule.
“I had the perfect opportunity to come in and be on a reasonably equal playing field at Chicago, since street circuits are sort of my deal,” Van Gisbergen said. “America’s a massive place, and there are so many young, talented drivers coming through. It’s hard for people to come over here and break into it, so I’m pretty lucky.”
Perhaps the biggest factor in Van Gisbergen’s win was the new Cup Series race car, called the “Next Gen,” which debuted in 2022. It’s less like old NASCAR cars (built to go fast and turn left) and more like a sports car (built to go fast, plus turn left and right), making it easier for non-NASCAR drivers to be competitive.
That adaptability hasn’t trickled down to NASCAR’s top development leagues. So while Van Gisbergen adjusts to the NASCAR schedule in Xfinity, he’s doing so in a totally unfamiliar car — and he’s already won in it twice.
“[I’ve learned] a huge amount of things, like just how funky the Xfinity car is to drive,” he said. “The biggest thing is that the Cup car, it feels like a race car. It feels like every other car I’ve driven around the world, with the aero and the rear end. It’s a huge evolution of a NASCAR, I guess, to go the whole different route that they have. Even on the oval, it kind of feels like a normal car.
“Whereas the Xfinity car, it’s only specific to oval racing, basically. The style of car that has been designed and developed for years, that NASCAR type of stock car. The rear end is really, really interesting, how it moves around. I’ve never driven a car like that.”
Since the arrival of the Next Gen, the NASCAR Xfinity and Cup cars are fundamentally different vehicles. The Xfinity car is old-school NASCAR: 15-inch wheels with five lug nuts each, a solid rear axle, and a four-speed manual transmission. The Next Gen car is in line with the rest of the world: 18-inch wheels with large single lug nuts, an independent rear suspension and a five-speed sequential transmission.
Those changes manifest themselves in many ways. When talking about the old Cup car versus the new one last year, 23XI Racing Cup Series driver Tyler Reddick told me the new car is especially durable on road courses.
“Where a lot of drivers would have issues under braking with the [last] car was with the old-school truck arms, and just how much those flex and wheel hop,” Reddick said. “Once you had axle hop — wheel hop — you were more than likely crashing. The more you had that axle hop, if you didn’t crash the car, you would just shake all the parts loose. You had to really go into the approach of: ‘If I’m going to push this car, I’m going to save it for the end of the race, because I don’t want to just rip the car apart.’
“With the Next Gen car, that’s totally different. With independent rear suspension, all the beefy suspension parts it has, you don’t really have situations where the car falls apart like the other car did. You can launch it across curbs as hard as you want.”
Van Gisbergen’s first Xfinity win came at Portland International Raceway earlier this month. On the first lap, the wheel hop got him.
“I got into Sam Mayer,” he said. “The rear end just starts locking up and doing whatever it does. It’s certainly an interesting thing. I haven’t really felt that in many cars, so it’s weird, to say the least.”
But the car is only one challenge in Van Gisbergen’s NASCAR switch. Another is the tracks; he comes from a background of sports cars, endurance racing, rally and more, but much of the NASCAR season happens on ovals.
So far, both of Van Gisbergen’s Xfinity wins are on road courses. He has an average finish of 15.7 so far this season, and on ovals, his best result so far is third in Atlanta.
“The ovals are very, very, very difficult,” Van Gisbergen said. “But I feel like I’m getting better and better, finishing the races with straight cars and starting to get more and more competitive. Road courses are [my] strength, but I don’t know if ovals are a weakness. We’re obviously not running at the very front, but getting better and better and learning a lot. So it’s kind of about where we expect it to be.”
One of the main voices in Van Gisbergen’s decision to come Stateside was Marcos Ambrose, who moved to NASCAR as a Supercars champion nearly 20 years ago. He was always a standout on road courses in the Cup Series, even with the old car, but ovals didn’t come as easily.
Right now, Van Gisbergen thinks he just needs time to adapt.
“I’ve had some great people helping me, with Kevin Harvick and Marcos Ambrose, and then my teammates A.J. [Allmendinger] and Josh [Williams] as well,” he said. “They’re always open to anything I ever ask.
“A.J.’s a good yardstick. He’s obviously capable of winning on the ovals, and we’re in the same equipment. If I can be matching him or running near what he’s doing in the races, that can only be a good thing. I’m trying to learn what he’s doing with the car to make it faster to try and match him.”
Van Gisbergen’s NASCAR switch is compelling on a number of levels. He’s 35 years old, around the age when longtime NASCAR drivers near their performance peak, and he had a career for the history books overseas. If he’d continued that career, he would’ve been a threat to win Supercars championships for years to come.
Instead, he’s giving himself a new challenge in America. He told ESPN that his Chicago performance probably makes NASCAR more appealing for other drivers, but that once they get here, “it’s certainly not easy.”
“Everyone here is very, very good,” Van Gisbergen said. “They’ve been doing these tracks for so long, and driving these cars every week. It’s been a huge change and challenge in life, moving here and the career. It’s been a lot of new skills to learn. But most of all, it’s been a lot of fun.”
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Dave Wilson
AUSTIN, Texas — Shortly after vanquishing No. 3 Texas A&M in a heated rivalry game Friday, Steve Sarkisian made his case for No. 16 Texas as worthy of a spot in the College Football Playoff.
The 27-17 victory was Sarkisian’s third win over a top-10 team this season — following wins over No. 6 Oklahoma and No. 9 Vanderbilt — which he touted as a first since LSU did the same in 2019.
“I think we’re absolutely a playoff team,” Sarkisian said, noting that there were pundits who argued that Texas A&M was the top team in the country by strength of schedule metrics. “We just beat them by two scores. So to me, that’s a pretty impressive win, a pretty dominant win for our team that I don’t know how many other teams can say they have wins like that on their schedule.”
Texas (9-3) also lost on the road to No. 3 Ohio State in the season opener and at No. 5 Georgia two weeks ago, finishing the season 3-2 against top-10 teams. The 14-7 loss to the Buckeyes, Sarkisian said, is the true test of what the CFP committee values, saying if the Longhorns had scheduled a cupcake, they would be 10-2.
“We went on the road to Ohio State in Week 1 and lost to them in a one-score game,” Sarkisian said. “We outgained them by nearly 200 yards, and no one else has been close to a one-score game against them. But I think more importantly, it’s the message that what do we want to send to the head coaches and the athletic directors around the country? Do you want us not to schedule Ohio State? Because if we’re a 10-2 team right now, this isn’t a discussion. We’re in the playoff. But we were willing to go up there and play that game.”
Sarkisian, in his postgame, on-field interview with ESPN’s Molly McGrath, added that “it would be a disservice to our sport” if the Longhorns weren’t in the CFP field. Later, in his full media availability, he said it would be easy for coaches and athletic directors to shy away from that type of scheduling in the future if the Longhorns are punished for such a high-profile matchup in the opening week of the season.
Senior safety Michael Taaffe, who had an interception at the team’s 3-yard line against the Aggies in the fourth quarter, agreed with his coach’s logic.
“I don’t think the committee should punish us for giving college football what they want to see,” Taaffe said. “Nonconference game, No. 1 vs. No. 2 in Columbus, Ohio, a rematch of the Cotton Bowl from last year, one of the biggest games in all college football. Everybody was tuning in for that game, and I think college football is really happy that Texas played Ohio State in Week 1.”
According to ESPN Research, the five teams ranked from 11 to 15 in the CFP rankings are a combined 4-8 against ranked opponents.
Sarkisian acknowledged that the Longhorns would be in a much stronger position without an Oct. 4 road loss to Florida but said there is precedent for such a loss as recently as last season, when Notre Dame earned a playoff berth and played Ohio State in the CFP national championship.
“The team that played for the national championship last year lost to Northern Illinois at home,” Sarkisian said, referring to the Irish. “Yet they still were good enough to go play for a national title. So I have no doubt in my mind that the team we have in that locker room downstairs is a playoff football team and worthy of an opportunity to play for a national championship.”
Texas A&M led Texas 10-3 at halftime as the Longhorns had only 112 yards and Arch Manning was 7-for-22 for 51 passing yards. But once Texas’ running game got going — Quintrevion Wisner ran for 155 yards — Manning rallied the Longhorns, finishing with 179 passing yards and 53 more rushing. He sealed the win with a 35-yard touchdown run on third-and-3 with a little over seven minutes left, sending Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium into a frenzy.
The two halves were a microcosm of the season for Manning, in his first year as a starter, when he started slowly but turned into a true dual threat for Texas over the second half of the season.
“Nobody works harder. Nobody prepares more,” Sarkisian said of Manning. “I mean, the blitz packages that A&M has is elite. It’s NFL level. And this guy managed our protections at the line of scrimmage beautifully, did a fantastic job. So all in all, I think for him to cap it off with a touchdown run was a pretty cool moment.”
Manning said he believed Texas has improved vastly this season and is playing its best football. He was asked to make his pitch to the CFP committee and obliged.
“We’re a good team, bro,” Manning said. “We’ve played a lot of good teams. We’re only getting better, and if you let us in, we can beat anyone.”
And what would he make of this season if the Longhorns don’t get in?
“I think we’re going to make the playoffs,” Manning said. “I don’t know why we wouldn’t. I’m not going to worry about that.”
Ohio State wide receivers Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate are expected to play against Michigan on Saturday, sources told ESPN.
Both Buckeyes stars have been limited in practice while dealing with lower-body injuries. The wide receivers are expected to be listed as questionable on the Big Ten availability report, but the expectation is they are available to play barring anything unforeseen in warmups.
Smith missed last week’s win over Rutgers after sustaining an injury against UCLA on Nov. 15, when he was seen with a limp leaving the field.
Tate hasn’t played since Nov. 1, as he was held out of the Purdue game on Nov. 8 after something bothered him in warmups and he was “a little tight,” coach Ryan Day said at the time.
Smith, a sophomore, is regarded as perhaps the country’s best all-around player. He has 69 catches for 902 yards and 10 touchdowns. Despite missing the Rutgers game, he is still tied for the Big Ten lead in touchdown receptions.
Tate has emerged as a game breaker for the Buckeyes and a projected NFL first-round pick. His 18.2 yards per catch leads the Big Ten. He has caught 39 passes for 711 yards and seven touchdowns.
They are the top targets for quarterback Julian Sayin, who is completing 79.4% of his passes with 27 touchdowns and four interceptions.
Ohio State is on a four-game losing streak against Michigan, including not scoring in the second half last year. Tate was Ohio State’s leading receiver in last year’s 13-10 loss with six receptions for 58 yards. Smith had five catches for 35 yards and a touchdown, which was his second-lowest output in the 2024 regular season.
For teams that aren’t playing in their conference championship games, this is it — the final chance to make a lasting impression on the College Football Playoff selection committee.
For some contenders, like Ole Miss, their regular-season résumé is now complete, and what happens in the fifth ranking on Tuesday night should be a strong indicator of their final placement on Selection Day. Others, like Miami, are banking on hope and help — and most importantly, one more win. It all began with the Egg Bowl on Friday — a game that not only kept Ole Miss in the playoff, but also technically in the SEC race.
That’s right — this thing is far from over, so check back after each game to see how the results will impact the playoff as the day unfolds.
Texas 27, Texas A&M 17
Rivalry Week presented its first shakeup of the top four when No. 16 Texas beat No. 3 Texas A&M — but it might not be all that jarring in the fifth ranking. The Aggies will likely drop to the 4-6 range behind Georgia. The Bulldogs have better wins including a 35-10 drubbing of … Texas. Georgia also has a better loss (to No. 10 Alabama), and has now clinched a spot in the SEC title game. The question is just how far Texas A&M will fall now that it has joined No. 5 Texas Tech, No. 6 Oregon and No. 7 Ole Miss in the one-loss club. The Aggies entered the weekend with a noticeable edge over Texas Tech in both strength of record (23 to 56) and strength of schedule (1 to 10). It’s possible the committee only drops the Aggies one spot, flipping them with Georgia, which means they’d still be in position to earn a first-round bye as the No. 4 seed. There would be a strong debate, though, about whether the Aggies, Texas Tech or Oregon, the latter which has impressed the committee lately by ranking in the top five in both offensive and defensive efficiency, deserves the highest seeding. The Aggies’ problem now is that they’d have to finish in the top four as an at-large team because they just got knocked out of the SEC title game.
While Texas now has arguably the best win in the country, it probably won’t be enough to catapult it into the top-10 as a three-loss team. Even with some upsets above them, it’s unlikely Texas would get higher than No. 12.
Indiana 56, Purdue 3
Indiana clinched a spot in the Big Ten championship game with its win against rival Purdue, locking in a CFP bid and beefing up its chances at keeping a first-round bye on Selection Day. The Hoosiers, who have been the committee’s No. 2 team in each of the first four rankings, still have a chance of grabbing the No. 1 spot in Tuesday’s ranking if Ohio State loses to Michigan. If the Buckeyes lose and Oregon wins Indiana will face Oregon in the Big Ten title game. If Michigan wins and Oregon loses the Hoosiers will face Michigan for the conference title.
The question is whether IU can maintain a top-four seed and a first-round bye as the Big Ten runner-up. If Indiana lost the title game, the committee would consider where their opponent was ranked and how close the game was. The Hoosiers would also be compared with other top one-loss teams, but playing a ranked opponent in the conference championship game — win or lose — would boost IU’s record strength by the committee’s metric.
Georgia 16, Georgia Tech 9
Georgia should keep its place as the committee’s top one-loss team following its win against rival Georgia Tech. Georgia’s Oct. 18 win against Ole Miss, along with their win at Tennessee and drubbing of Texas, impressed the committee. The Bulldogs’ consistency on offense and defense has also played well with the committee. Georgia’s first-round bye would only be in question at this point if it finishes as a two-loss SEC runner-up.
Barring an unusual combination of ACC results, No. 23 Georgia Tech will be out of the playoff at 9-3. The only way the Yellow Jackets can extend their playoff hope is through the ACC championship game. They entered the weekend with a 1.5% chance of making the game, according to ESPN Analytics.
Ole Miss 38, Mississippi State 19
With its win against rival Mississippi State on Friday, Ole Miss likely locked up a playoff spot and remains in a strong position to host a first-round home game. If Alabama loses to Auburn on Saturday, Ole Miss will clinch a spot in the SEC championship game. Even if it doesn’t, though, the one-loss Rebels should still be a CFP lock.
As for the uncertainty still looming around coach Lane Kiffin, if Ole Miss turns to an interim head coach for the playoff, the selection committee could consider that. CFP protocol states the group will consider “other relevant factors such as unavailability of key players and coaches that may have affected a team’s performance during the season or likely will affect its postseason performance.” Ole Miss won’t miss the playoff because Kiffin left for another job, but it could get dinged a spot or two if the committee thinks the team won’t be the same without him.
Utah 31, Kansas 21
No. 13 Utah punctuated its résumé with a win against 5-7 Kansas, but it’s still unlikely to reach the playoff without multiple upsets of teams above it — especially after just being leapfrogged by No. 12 Miami in the latest CFP ranking. Even with a win, to reach the Big 12 championship game, Utah still needs Texas Tech to lose and for both BYU and Arizona State to win. The Utes’ best hope to reach the CFP is still as an at-large team.
Getting that bid isn’t inconceivable if a combination of two-loss teams above them lose. If Oklahoma, Alabama and Miami lose, it would be difficult for any of them to stay in the top 12 as three-loss teams. Utah would need at least two of them to lose to move into the top 10, which is where it would need to be to actually be seeded in the field. The No. 11 and No. 12 teams this year will be excluded during the seeding process to make room for the fourth- and fifth-highest ranked conference champions.
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