Shane van Gisbergen did not just arrive in NASCAR but he completely transformed the future of Trackhouse Racing. In 2026, the team is fielding three cars full-time for the second straight year, featuring van Gisbergen, Connor Zilisch, and Ross Chastain. But this massive expansion was only possible because of one historic race from the New Zealander back in 2023.

Justin Marks credited Shane van Gisbergen for their ambitions to expand

SVG arrived on the NASCAR scene, thanks to a little initiative from Trackhouse Racing. Dubbed Project 91, it was supposed to be a pathway for international racers to get a taste of NASCAR. Former F1 champion Kimi Raikkonen was the first to try in 2022, but he struggled. Raikkonen was used to ultra-light, high-downforce cars. It made the heavy NASCAR stock car a difficult transition.

However, Shane van Gisbergen rocked up to the 2023 Chicago Street Course for his debut NASCAR race, and schooled the field. In light of this, what were the far-reaching effects of this decision to field the Kiwi driver?.

“What he’s done on road courses is amazing, to your point I think it has changed the narrative in the sport around road racing, and I think it has affected the schedule. You have these moments in sports, where an athlete comes in and can change the sport,” Trackhouse boss Justin Marks told Jeff Gluck. “We saw it in Tiger Woods and with Michael Jordan, and with like, these guys that come in and they change the game. I think he’s done that at the road courses, I think he’s raised the level of the game on road courses. Some serendipity and some sort of reactionary business planning, but sometimes when you recognise something special, you got to go for it and that’s what we did with him.”

He declared that without that Chicago race win, it would not have given them a chance to expand to three cars. As a matter of fact, when van Gisbergen openly admitted to wanting to race full-time in NASCAR, that set the ball rolling.

Another domino effect of the Chicago win was the WeatherTech sponsorship, closely followed by Red Bull. It provided the impetus to expand to three full-time charters. The reason why he gambled on SVG was because of the nature of the Gen 7 car. Marks noticed that it did not behave like a NASCAR stock car. So he elected to bring in a racer from a different discipline.

Trackhouse Racing have been on a bit of a downward spiral

For the past couple of season, Trackhouse Racing have not been the force that it used to be. In the early years, it had that underdog, potential giant-killer energy and producer of viral moments. Unfortunately, those powers have waned and the only form of success has been SVG on the road courses. Chastain’s last win came in 2025 at the Charlotte Motor Speedway and ended the year in 10th place.

Meanwhile, Shane van Gisbergen had his road course expertise to fall back on, while he built up experience on ovals. The process has been slow and gradual, but the improvement is visible. On the other end of the spectrum, Connor Zilisch has endured a debut season of nightmares, with multiple crashes this season. His seventh place finish in Sonoma was his best finish in 2026 and his only top 10. Chastain as the more experienced head, has not been the threatening force he used to be.

He has now gone a full year without a race win, and the highest he ever finished was third. This is a far cry from the driver who pulled off an insane move to reach the final four in 2022, finishing runner-up to Joey Logano. Then a year later, while Ryan Blaney took the title, Chastain was the one who won the season finale race.

Now, Trackhouse is looking for a way back to that exact level of greatness.