Very quickly in his NASCAR career, Shane van Gisbergen has established himself as the king of road courses.
A veteran of V8 Supercars and GT Racing, van Gisbergen became the first driver since 1963 to win their Cup Series debut when he took the checkered flag in 2023 at the Chicago Street Course. Last season, his first in NASCAR’s top-level as a full-time driver for Trackhouse Racing, van Gisbergen won five races and made the playoffs.
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In all, the native of New Zealand has seven Cup Series victories on road courses and five more wins in the second-tier O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. He needs just two more victories to tie Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon for the most career road course wins at the Cup level (9) and AJ Allmendinger for the most across NASCAR’s top three touring series (14).
van Gisbergen could reach that mark within the next two weekends, but it won’t be easy.
First up on Sunday, June 21 is the Anduril 250, where drivers will navigate a 3.4-mile road course across Naval Base Coronado near San Diego. It’s the first time ever that NASCAR has raced on an active military installation.
“The trouble spots are you start at (Turn) 1 and count to 16,” van Gisbergen said after walking the track. “Every corner looks like someone has had an issue. Every single section is its own problem. Yeah, I think I’ve seen someone make an error or do something wrong in each one.
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“I don’t think there is a possibility of doing a perfect lap here.”
More: Jimmie Johnson, Jamie McMurray headline NASCAR Truck Series race on Navy base
With the USS Carl Vinson providing a picturesque backdrop, drivers will complete about 255 miles in 75 laps on Sunday. It’s the longest course for the Cup Series this season.
The track blends together fresh pavement, worn streets of the base, a rough tarmac where jets land and even train-style tracks that are used to guide cranes on the facility. Drivers will have to navigate all that, some 16 turns, going uphill and downhill, and more than 3,000 barriers that were installed.
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NASCAR also put up 6.8 miles of walling and fencing. The course took 17 days to construct.
“It’s going to be a really rough and technical course, a lot of unknowns,” van Gisbergen said. “It’s going to be a real challenge to have a car that works all kind of surfaces and transitions to them.”
LONG POND, PENNSYLVANIA – JUNE 13: Shane Van Gisbergen, driver of the #97 SuperFile Chevrolet, prepares to practice for the NASCAR Cup Series Great American Getaway 400 presented by VISITPA at Pocono Raceway on June 13, 2026 in Long Pond, Pennsylvania.
Still, van Gisbergen is widely viewed as the favorite to win Sunday by both sportsbooks and his fellow drivers. He’s gone to victory lane in six of the last seven times that the Cup Series has visited a road course, most recently winning at Watkins Glen in May by chasing down Ty Gibbs and Michael McDowell after a green flag pit stop to go on and win by more than seven seconds.
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“I think Shane’s background is the ideal background, which is V8 Supercars,” NASCAR veteran Brad Keselowski said. “This is kind of what they do. Similar types of tracks.”
van Gisbergen also has a knack for capturing victories at places that NASCAR has never gone before, winning that first Chicago Street Race in 2023, then taking the checkered flag at the road course designed for Mexico City last year.
But the 37-year-old driving the No. 97 Chevrolet doesn’t like all the talk about him having a victory already wrapped up on Sunday.
“It pisses me off a bit,” van Gisbergen said. “I feel like it disrespects my competition. I hold my competition at a really high level. So, I feel like I’ve spent the last little while talking myself down because I know there are probably 10 guys that can win on pure pace, and in NASCAR, so much stuff can happen in strategy and stages that there are even more guys that can win. So, I don’t think it’s going to be easy, that’s for sure.”
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Tyler Reddick won at a road course earlier this season, besting van Gisbergen at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas. That was amid a three-race winning streak for the driver of the No. 45 Toyota for 23XI Racing.
Reddick is a California native and currently the points leader in the Cup Series standings with a 19-point advantage over Denny Hamlin.
“I would love to win in my home state,” Reddick said. “We got to figure out if we are going to have the speed to contend for the win or if it’s going to be about getting points. That’s just the tricky thing about where we are at.”
Hamlin is currently the hottest driver in the sport at the moment, having won three consecutive races for the first time in his career behind the wheel of the No. 11 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing. The 45-year-old took the checkered flag at Nashville, Michigan and Pocono over the last three weeks. However, he hasn’t won at a road course since 2016.
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Other challengers to van Gisbergen could include Allmendinger, McDowell or Gibbs, plus reigning Cup Series champion Kyle Larson and his young teammate, Connor Zilisch. The 19-year-old driver of the No. 88 Chevrolet for Trackhouse has seven wins on road courses in the second-tier O’Reilly Series.
The race will also feature a return to the Cup Series for 50-year-old Jimmie Johnson, a seven-time champion of NASCAR’s top level. While Johnson won at only one road course in his Cup Series career — in 2010 at Sonoma, where drivers will head next weekend — the El Cajon, California native will aim to put on a good show for his hometown fans.
Making his NASCAR debut in this race is also former Formula 1 driver Kevin Magnussen, who will drive the No. 91 Chevrolet for Trackhouse.
“There are a number of corners you don’t necessarily want to play around with, but it certainly seems like the surface in a number of areas is slick and grippy and some areas wore out,” Reddick said. “Everyone is curious to see what the pace evolution is as we continue to rubber it in and how much it will pick up.”
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As NASCAR continues to innovate and take competitions to new places, could the sport race on another military base in the future? Tim Clark, NASCAR’s executive vice president and chief brand officer, hopes so.
“That was my first thought when this came together,” Clark previously told USA TODAY Sports. “Man, if we get this right, how awesome would it be to take this across the country to other installations and work with the various branches in the military? So, not to get too far ahead of myself, but I think I think there would be a lot of excited people if this could be the first of many.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Shane van Gisbergen says NASCAR course on Naval Base Coronado full of ‘trouble spots’
