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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Kristen Shilton
EDMONTON, Alberta — Dallas Stars forward Roope Hintz remains a game-time decision ahead of Game 4 of the Western Conference Final on Tuesday.
The club’s top skater has been sidelined since Game 2 in the series when he took a slash to the left leg from Edmonton Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse. Hintz took part in warmups before Game 3 on Sunday but exited early and was ruled out. He was back on the ice for Dallas’ optional practice on Monday and told reporters he was “feeling good” and “trying to do everything I can” to get back in for Game 4.
It was early in the third period of Game 2 when Hintz — parked in front of the Oilers’ net — shoved Nurse from behind, and the Oilers’ blueliner responded by swinging his stick at Hintz’s leg. Hintz was down on the ice for several minutes after that before being helped off by Lian Bichsel and Mikael Granlund.
Nurse received a two-minute penalty for the slash on Hintz but no supplementary discipline from the league. The blueliner addressed the incident for the first time Tuesday, explaining it didn’t come with malicious intent.
“I was backing up to net and I got shot in the back. And I think it was just a natural reaction [to respond],” Nurse said. “It’s probably a play that everyone in this room, whether you’re a net-front guy or D man, probably happens a dozen, two dozen times in a year. It’s unfortunate that I must have got [Hintz] in a bad spot. You don’t want to go out there and hurt anyone. But it was just one of those plays that happens so often.”
Having Hintz unavailable hurt the Stars in Game 3, a 6-1 drubbing by the Oilers that put Dallas in a 2-1 hole in the best-of-7 series. Hintz is the Stars’ second-leading scorer in the postseason, with 11 goals and 15 points through 15 games. He was hopeful when taking warmups Sunday that he’d feel good enough to get back in but a quick discussion with the training staff made it clear he wasn’t ready.
Coach Pete DeBoer has since classified Hintz’s status as day-to-day.
“Of course you want to go every night, but sometimes you just can’t,” said Hintz. “I don’t know how close I [was to playing]. But I have played many years [and I] know when it’s good and when it’s not. I should be good to know that [when] it comes to that decision.”
The Oilers will have some lineup changes of their own to sort through in Game 4. Connor Brown is out after he took a hit from Alexander Petrovic in Game 3; he’ll be replaced by the incoming Viktor Arvidsson. Calvin Pickard — injured in Edmonton’s second-round series against Vegas — will return to back up for Stuart Skinner. And Edmonton continues to wait on defenseman Mattias Ekholm, who is getting closer to coming back from a lower-body injury.
Puck drop for Game 4 is 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
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Greg Wyshynski
SUNRISE, Fla. — Carolina Hurricanes defenseman Jaccob Slavin is happy to never get another question about his team’s record-setting NHL playoff losing streak.
“Wonderful. That’s wonderful,” he said after Carolina’s 3-0 win over the Florida Panthers in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals on Monday night. “The guys in here worked hard tonight and that’s all you can ask for.”
The Hurricanes avoided a sweep by the Panthers, sending the series back to Raleigh, North Carolina, for Game 5 on Wednesday night. In the process, Carolina snapped a 15-game losing streak in the conference finals — the longest losing streak by a team in a playoff round other than the Stanley Cup Final in NHL history.
The Hurricanes’ last win in the Eastern Conference finals was in Game 7 against the Buffalo Sabres in 2006, a game that saw current Carolina coach Rod Brind’Amour score the winning goal.
“It’s been a story. So, yeah, it’s nice to not have to talk about that [anymore],” Brind’Amour said.
When the streak began in 2009, Carolina captain Jordan Staal was helping the Pittsburgh Penguins to a conference finals sweep of the Hurricanes. He said the win over Florida in Game 4 showed how much pride was in the Canes’ locker room, as they refused to allow the Panthers to end their season.
“There’s a lot of guys that didn’t want to go home,” Staal said. “We know we have a huge hill to climb here. We’ve got a great team on the other side that is going to come back with a better effort. It’s a great challenge.”
Florida coach Paul Maurice, whose team had a chance to advance to a third straight Stanley Cup Final with a victory, gave credit to the Hurricanes for a solid and disruptive game while acknowledging that his team could have gotten to its own game better.
“I haven’t been nearly as down on that hockey team as you fine people have been over the last three games, and I won’t be as down on my team tonight,” he said. “[The Hurricanes] were good. They had good sticks. They had good quickness. You see that happen more often when the possessor of the puck’s feet are not moving.”
Three factors changed the vibe for Carolina in Game 4.
Goalie Frederik Andersen had his second shutout of the postseason after being pulled in Game 2 and benched for Game 3. Andersen was 7-2 with a .937 save percentage and a 1.36 goals-against average in nine playoff games before facing Florida. In two games against the Panthers, he gave up nine goals on 36 shots (.750, 5.54). Andersen had given up just 12 goals in his previous nine postseason games.
In Game 4, he was a great last line of defense, stopping all 20 shots.
After the game, Andersen declined to discuss being benched.
“I don’t really want to talk about my feelings. It’s not about that. It’s about the team and trying to put the best lineup on the ice that they feel like gets the job done. So I’m ready for when I’m called upon and glad to be able to play,” he said.
Andersen played a key role in another factor: the Carolina penalty kill. The Panthers were 4-for-5 on the power play in the first two games of the conference finals. The Hurricanes killed off four power plays in each of the past two games.
“Our goalie was great when he needed to be. The penalty kill was phenomenal,” Brind’Amour said. “We gave ourselves a chance, and that’s all we can ask.”
Perhaps most crucially, the Hurricanes scored the first goal. Carolina is now 6-0 when scoring first and 3-5 when it trails first in these playoffs. In the regular season, the Hurricanes were 30-7-2 when scoring first and 17-23-3 when trailing first.
They scored first and then played the type of close, low-scoring game they excel at. As winger Taylor Hall said before Game 4: “We’re thinking about winning the game 1-0. If it’s close, then we’re in a good spot.”
“It’s been a story. So, yeah, it’s nice to not have to talk about that [anymore].”
Rod Brind’Amour on Carolina snapping 15-game losing streak in conference finals
Forward Logan Stankoven opened the scoring at 10:45 of the second period, giving Carolina its first lead of the series. Rookie defenseman Alexander Nikishin made a terrific backhand pass across the neutral zone to spring Stankoven ahead of the Panthers’ defense, and he beat goalie Sergei Bobrovsky for his fifth goal of the playoffs.
Stankoven said he called for the pass from Nikishin, who was playing in his third postseason game.
“The play happened so fast and it was a great feed by him to make that play off the turnover. It all starts with him,” said Stankoven, who was acquired from the Dallas Stars in the Mikko Rantanen deadline trade.
It remained 1-0 until Sebastian Aho and Staal added empty-net goals in the last 2:11 for the 3-0 win.
Slavin said Game 4 was in the Carolina’s comfort zone.
“A thousand percent. It was 1-0 up until the end there. You can’t get any tighter than that,” he said.
With that, the Hurricanes ended their historic losing streak and turned their attention to making more NHL history. Only four teams in the history of the Stanley Cup playoffs have rallied to win a best-of-seven series after trailing 3-0, although two have done it in the past 15 years (Philadelphia Flyers in 2010 and Los Angeles Kings in 2014).
“You watched the way we played tonight. Everyone put their heart on the line,” Slavin said. “We know we’ve got a good group in here. We know we’ve got all the pieces. We just have to bring it every night.”
The good news for the Dallas Stars is that if the Western Conference finals get to a Game 7, they have the NHL’s master of Game 7s behind their bench.
The bad news is that they need to get to Game 7 for that to matter. And after going down 2-1 in the series to the Edmonton Oilers via a 6-1 loss in Game 3, another defeat could make that difficult.
Can they punch back in Game 4 to knot the matchup at 2-2 heading back home to Dallas for Game 5?
Here are notes on the matchup from ESPN Research, as well as betting intel from ESPN BET:
More from Game 3: Recap | Grades
Matchup notes
Dallas Stars at Edmonton Oilers
Game 4 | 8 p.m. ET | ESPN/ESPN+
Following the Oilers’ win in Game 3, ESPN BET has adjusted the series winner odds to Oilers -375 (previously -140) and Stars +280 (previously +120). The Oilers’ Cup winner odds are now +140, while the Stars’ are +700. Connor McDavid is atop the Conn Smythe odds leaderboard at +175.
The Oilers are now 10-2 in their past 12 games, after losing the first two games of the first round vs. the Los Angeles Kings, and are 20-3 at home in the playoffs since 2017 when leading after two periods.
The Stars lost consecutive games for the first time in the 2025 playoffs, and have one goal total in their past three road games (Games 2 and 5 of the second round against the Winnipeg Jets and Game 3 against Edmonton).
McDavid powered the Oilers to a Game 3 win with his 44th multipoint and sixth multigoal game of his playoff career. McDavid has as many playoff games with multiple points (44) as he does with no points (20) or one point (24).
Teammate Evan Bouchard opened the scoring with his sixth goal this postseason, tying Leon Draisaitl for the team lead. Bouchard is the first defenseman with six goals in consecutive postseasons since Rob Blake in 2001 and 2002. Bouchard also recorded an assist, marking his 24th career multipoint playoff game, which extended his record for defensemen in a four-postseason span.
Stuart Skinner was remarkable in goal once again, stopping 33 of 34 shots to earn his fourth win this postseason. It was his first win of these playoffs that didn’t end in a shutout, as the Stars’ goal with 4:25 left in the second period ended Skinner’s shutout streak at 99 minutes, 33 seconds. With the win, Skinner tied Andy Moog for the third-most playoff wins by a goaltender in Oilers history (23); Bill Ranford is next on the list at 25, and Grant Fuhr is well ahead at No. 1 with 74.
Dallas’ Mikko Rantanen recorded an assist on the goal from Jason Robertson, but has gone without a goal in his past six games. In his previous six games before the drought, he scored nine goals, which remains tied for the NHL lead this postseason.
Jake Oettinger allowed six goals in the loss, tied for the most in a playoff game in his career; the previous occasion was Game 6 of the 2023 Western Conference finals against the Vegas Golden Knights.
Scoring leaders
GP: 14 | G: 5 | A: 17
GP: 16 | G: 9 | A: 12
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