After having his postseason hopes ripped from his arms Saturday at Daytona, Trackhouse Racing’s Shane van Gisbergen took to social media to comment on the evening and his season as a whole.
“Shame to miss out on the chase,” he said on X. “One night doesn’t sum up our year but we haven’t been good enough, so it’s been cool to be close anyway.”
The Australian-born driver has been nothing short of dominant on road courses since his NASCAR debut in 2023, and in years past, winning a single race with lefties and righties would be good enough to qualify for the playoffs. But under this year’s new Chase format, all drivers had to qualify on points; so despite having a pair of wins under his belt in 2026, SVG came up one spot shy of the postseason.
Despite the bitter end, van Gisbergen expressed gratitude for his obvious improvement on oval tracks this year and thanked everyone on his team.
“As a team we’ve struggled this year but proud to have been able to match my teammates on the ovals and to have stepped up this year,” he said. “Obviously wanted to be in that chase and we just didn’t make it. Thanks to the @TeamTrackhouse #97 team for their hard work, good to get a first oval stage win at least and there’s still a few races to come for the year.”
van Gisbergen joins his teammates Ross Chastain and Connor Zilisch on the outside looking in of the Chase cutline, spelling major trouble for a team that was, once upon a time, an up-and-coming juggernaut. Still, van Gisbergen remains a class act through clearly unstable times at Trackhouse.