Each week, The Athletic asks a different race car driver the same 12 questions. Up next: Shane van Gisbergen, the three-time Australian Supercars champion who shocked the NASCAR world by winning his Cup Series debut a year ago at the Chicago Street Course. Now a NASCAR Xfinity Series rookie, van Gisbergen will be pulling double duty at the second edition of the downtown Chicago street racing weekend. This interview has been edited for clarity, but the full version is available on the 12 Questions podcast.
1. What is currently the number one thing on your bucket list?
Probably winning on an oval track. I know it will take time and I haven’t achieved it yet, but it’s an important goal to work towards.
2. How much NASCAR media coverage do you consume?
Little by little, more and more. I’m still stuck in the things of the rest of the world.
So whatever happens in Supercars, are you still considering it?
You just interrupted me while I was watching the race last night. (Laughs) Yeah, I still watch it. It’s hard to stop watching something you’ve been doing for 15 or 16 years. I still follow it. I have a lot of friends and people who are involved in it.
3. Beyond winning, what is the best way to measure success in racing?
Just finishing the days or the races with a smile on your face and knowing that you gave the best of yourself, your team, your cars and being happy at the end of the season. Even if you won or came second or 50th, it’s being happy with that.
You seem to have a lot of fun all the time. Have you always been like this or have you evolved into it?
No. Last year I was a bit of a jerk to myself all the time. If you finish third (in Supercars) it’s a bad day, whereas this year I’ve finished 15th and it’s an amazing day. It’s just the expectation you have on yourself. And here, it’s not a bad day if you finish fifth or 10th. It’s just different levels of expectations, levels of drivers and series, things like that.
It’s hard to explain. I have that pressure this year because I’m trying to perform at my best to move up (to the Cup Series). But then again, if I finish 15th and have a perfect car and learn a lot, it’s still a good day. So it took me a while to get used to that.
4. What opinion do you have about NASCAR that you think NASCAR fans don’t share?
(Thinks for a moment) There’s not much I don’t like about this right now. I agree with the fans so far. I can’t think of anything.
5. What’s the most important thing fans don’t know about what you do for a living?
All the work that goes on behind the scenes during the week that you don’t see that I wish was explained better. Like the Chevy Technology Center or the team simulations, the setups, how much work goes into it and how cool the technology is. When we did the Wheel Force test (the car that collects data) at Sonoma, I learned so much. I had no idea that the technology existed and how amazing it is, and how easy it would be to show people and explain it to them. I guess teams and manufacturers love to keep their intellectual property, but the technology that I’ve been exposed to, even last year when I came to Chicago, was mind-blowing. And I wish there was a way to explain that and show it to everyone.
6. This question is about a topical issue that concerns you. Recently, we’ve seen several of your Supercars colleagues come to try their hand at NASCAR. We keep hearing that this is because stock cars and Supercars are very similar. But for someone who has never driven either, how similar are they really? Are they that similar or are they just more similar than other cars in the world?
So the Xfinity car, I’ve never driven anything like it. I’ve never driven a car that drives like a forklift, where the rear end does the steering. All the other cars feel solid, planted, generating downforce in a straight line, rather than drifting.
The Cup car is comparable to almost every other race car in the world. So I got in that Cup car at the Coke 600 and that was the first real oval I did (in Cup) and it feels like a regular car. You think, “Okay, I can go ahead and get comfortable with this, get a feel for it.”
Whereas in an Xfinity car, the car is sliding, and I don’t know if it’s the differential moving, the air doing its thing, or if the car is actually sliding. There are a lot of characteristics and sensations that I’ve never felt before. And whenever I’ve talked to people like Kyle Busch or Chase Elliott, they’re like, “For us, it’s the opposite. We love that feeling of the car being stationary and rolling.”
So yes, the Cup Car is very different to a Supercar, but it is still more relevant than most production cars here.
7. This is a hit or miss question and I’m going to ask it differently for each person. Your style and personality seem to fit perfectly with NASCAR fans so far. Even when you’ve had aggressive moments, like with Austin Hill, they love it. Do you have any idea why you’ve been able to connect with NASCAR fans?
I’m still trying to figure out how it all works. I’m quite a shy and reserved person, but I can still have personality. But in the last few years, in the Australian media, you get judged very harshly by the media and fans. You isolate yourself and sometimes you get aggressive about it, or you don’t say the right thing or you keep it all to yourself. And you get torn apart for it.
Instead, here I feel like I can be myself, I can say what I think and it comes across in the right way. I see that in a lot of personalities here. All the drivers have a lot more personality. Everyone has personality in Australia, but not in a public way. Here you can show it and you are not judged as much. People, the media and the fans seem to appreciate it more here and relate to it. I try not to think about it too much, because I think just being myself works.
It’s very interesting. When I see interviews (about myself) or even know what I was like in Australia, people think I’m a different person. But I’m not (different) to my friends. Now I’m just showing it to people. Like I said, I haven’t figured it out yet. It’s very different here.
8. What do you like about where you grew up? (He is from the outskirts of Auckland, New Zealand.)
I love where I grew up. I’ll be moving back there as soon as I stop driving. I love New Zealand, I love how relaxed it is. It’s how close you can be to the city, in the middle of the hustle and bustle, but it doesn’t take long until you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere and on a farm. That’s where I want to be: on a farm, relaxed, at home and in my own space. But I love New Zealand. My friends and family are there, and I’ll be going back there as soon as I can.
Did you grow up more outside the city?
Yes. I grew up in a place called Manukau, which is half an hour from Auckland. You can get to the city centre in half an hour and we lived on 16 hectares in the countryside. Pretty cool.
Shane van Gisbergen celebrates after winning the 2023 Bathurst 1000 in the Australian Supercars Championship. He is now a full-time driver in the Xfinity Series. (Morgan Hancock / /Keynote USA/Getty Images)
9. What personality trait are you most proud of?
This year in particular I feel like I’m always having fun, but when it’s time to get going, I can switch my mindset and focus. I go into race mode immediately. I don’t know what that characteristic is, but I’m pretty good at it.
10. Which driver would you not want to get stuck in an elevator with? This question might seem pretty obvious, considering your run-ins with Austin Hill lately.
(Laughs) Yeah, I can’t think of anyone else besides that one. It would probably have to be him. But who knows, maybe we can work things out.
11. What was an incident you had with a pilot that was not mentioned on television or in the media?
I had a couple of good races in Australia, when I qualified badly. I had a friend (Scott Pye), we were teammates, we shared a pit spot. And we always qualified next to each other, so we were 19th and 20th or something like that. And when we shared the same row on the starting grid, we would make a $50 bet on who would win after the first lap.
So at Eastern Creek, Scotty caught me on the exit and then in Turn 2, I dove straight into the grass to get past him and I hit him in the gate and I went away and waved him off. And I made him pay the 50 bucks. (Laughs)
That’s incredible. Nobody noticed at the time?
No, nobody knew. (Laughs)
12. Every week I ask a host to ask me a question for the next interview. The last one was with Carson Hocevar and he has a two-part question he’d like to ask you. The first is: What was the first American food you tried that blew you away and made you think, “I can’t believe this is what they have here?”
A flowering onion. It’s in Outback, the Australian place, but I’d never heard of or seen a flowering onion. It was amazing, but you can feel the calories as you eat it.
Wait! Does the advertising for this make it sound like Australian food or something?
I’ve never heard of it, but they should have it in Australia. It’s pretty good.
The other question Carson wanted to know was: “How does the travel from race to race in Supercars compare to the travel from race to race here?” Do you fly on charter planes in Australia? Do you fly commercial? How does it work there?
In Supercars, it’s all about business. And these are first-world problems, but every time I fly commercial here, I hate life. Charlotte airport is the worst experience I’ve ever had. So we’re very lucky with team flights (teams fly charter planes in NASCAR). The planes aren’t the best, but it’s amazing. You pack your bags, you go, and you’re home the next day.
But in Australia, flying commercial was a much better experience. We flew commercial everywhere.
So what’s so great about Australia?
Airports are easy. Let’s say my flight leaves at 8:00 and you board at 7:30. I get to the airport at 7:20, go through security and that’s it. But here, I leave you two hours at the airport. Just kidding. I spent an hour and fifteen minutes at security the other day. It’s ridiculous here. And you have to take your shoes off and all that at security. But these are first-world problems; it could be worse.
Do you have any questions I can ask the next person? I don’t know who that is yet.
(van Gisbergen asked to wait and see before asking a question.)
GO DEEPER
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(Top photo of Shane van Gisbergen celebrating his Xfinity Series win at Sonoma in June: Meg Oliphant//Keynote USA/Getty Images)
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