Motorsport news: Trackhouse Racing’s Justin Marks, on why Shane van Gisbergen can be a NASCAR star
Shane van Gisbergen’s new racing team boss has revealed why the Kiwi ace can become a NASCAR champion, his thoughts on the Supercars talent pool and what it’s like having rapper Pitbull as a co-owner.
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Shane van Gisbergen’s new racing boss has predicted the New Zealand ace can become a NASCAR champion as he labelled Supercars as an “untapped resource” for future racers in the United States.
Opening up on his plans to turn van Gisbergen into a NASCAR star, Trackhouse Racing founder and co-owner Justin Marks rated the triple Supercars champion as one of the smartest racers he had met who had the potential to leave his mark on the top-rung Cup series.
After making the switch from Supercars at the end of last year, van Gisbergen has already made an encouraging start to his US racing career when he finished third in just his second race in the NASCAR Xfinity series at the Atlanta Motor Speedway last weekend.
It followed his 12th-place finish in his opening race at Daytona in an eventful introduction to superspeedway racing and left him sitting ninth in the second-tier XFinity series standings.
Marks said van Gisbergen, who put his name in lights in the US after a stunning Cup series debut on the streets of Chicago last July, could “absolutely” become a future NASCAR champion.
“I think that the next gen car that we have in NASCAR right now probably presents the best opportunity that the sport has ever had for attracting champions from other disciplines,” Marks said.
“This car is much more like a road race car, it’s much more like cars that compete all around the world whereas the old generation NASCARs were very specialised for this type of racing.
“A lot of what made NASCAR historically so difficult for other disciplines was learning a car that was so uniquely set up for oval track racing, but this one is not quite that case.
“So for a guy with his (van Gisbergen’s) talent and his capability, if he stays focused and he really wants it and he puts the work in, I don’t think there is anything that he can’t accomplish.”
Van Gisbergen has already set the target of making a full-time move into the top-level Cup series in 2025 after a year getting an intensive course in American racing as part of a development program mapped out by Trackhouse Racing.
The three-time Bathurst 1000 champion will compete in the Xfinity series full-time this year, while he will also run in seven NASCAR Cup series races.
Marks said he was confident van Gisbergen would be ready to graduate to the top level Cup series full-time from next year.
“There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be able to,” Marks said.
“Especially the way that he has approached these first two races, just his level of professionalism and attention to detail.
“I brought him over here because I want to see him in a Cup car full-time and we’re just trying to do everything we can to set him up and give him the best possible opportunity to do that.
“It has gone probably as good as I hoped the start of the season would have gone. We start the season here with two pretty unique races, but he has proven to be as intelligent and prepared and talented as we hoped and thought he would be.
“He is one of the smartest racers that I have been around, just his rate of thinking and how quickly he can process information and make things happen and his racecraft, being able to see the big picture, he sees the whole race, but just this corner and this lap.
“I continue to be more and more excited about his opportunity here every time he gets in the race car.”
Van Gisbergen has followed former Supercars stars Marcos Ambrose (NASCAR) and fellow Kiwi Scott McLaughlin (IndyCar) in making the move from the Australian V8 series to racing in the US.
Marks felt there was plenty more potential for drivers from Supercars to follow in van Gisbergen’s footsteps and make a move to the US.
“I have said even before Shane drove our race car that I felt like the talent pool in Australia and New Zealand is a little bit of an untapped resource and a really great opportunity for bringing international drivers to NASCAR because (Supercars is) the closest thing in the world to NASCAR racing that exists out there,” Marks said.
“So it’s difficult to bring a guy from Formula 1 or from Le Mans prototypes or any other discipline to NASCAR just because what we do is so different.
“But you watch a Supercars race and it looks like a NASCAR Cup series race on a road course, it’s very tight confines, it’s hard racing, it’s physical racing, so I think in this era of the sport with this car and the type of resources that we are putting behind SvG, I’m a bit believer that those guys can come over if they want to and be very successful in America.
“What SvG was able to do in Chicago … really opened up everybody’s eyes that those guys down there are the real deal and I think it’s opened up the door for a lot of conversations with other Supercar drivers.”
Reflecting on the moment which launched van Giserbergen’s NASCAR career, Marks said his memorable Chicago victory last year – when he became the first driver in 60 years to win in his first Cup series start – was a historic one for the sport.
“Almost a year later it is still difficult to put into words what that moment meant,” Marks said.
“I feel like it was a moment that was so much bigger than just Trackhouse or just Shane, I think it was just a huge moment for the history of the sport.
“I expected him to go and contend for a top-10 finish, I thought there were so many new things and the racing is so difficult in the Cup series that it was just going to be almost impossible for him to win, but that he was going to be very, very competitive.
“His speed late in the race and how he was so surgical and decisive about the passes that he made in setting people up, he was just on a completely different level.
“It just felt like it was a moment that was so much bigger than any one person, it was just a real pivotal moment in the history of the sport.”
Van Gisbergen now counts rap star Pitbull among his new race team bosses as a co-owner of Trackhouse alongside former NASCAR racer Marks, who said the artist’s music was “blaring every weekend” among the crew.
“When we started Trackhouse, we wanted to build a brand that transcended the sport, that really wasn’t siloed in NASCAR racing, but it was something that everyone could learn about and have access to because ultimately we see ourselves as an early stage motorsports entertainment brand,” Marks said.
“I really wanted a partner that could give us a voice to a bigger global audience to really promote what we’re all about and be able to bring business opportunities and get our brand and our stories in front of a lot of people and he (Pitbull) was doing some promotional work with NASCAR and he wanted to do more.
“It’s been an amazing ride … it’s been a great partnership and it’s just a guy that appreciates hard work and sacrifice and the grind and big passionate vision and we share those things.”
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Originally published as Motorsport news: Trackhouse Racing’s Justin Marks, on why Shane van Gisbergen can be a NASCAR star
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