Van Gisbergen improves on multiple tracks, wins 2025 Sunoco Rookie of the Year

Shane van Gisbergen added to his list of racing accolades this season, earning the title of the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series' top rookie at the spring-chicken age of 36. While the "young gun" label from long-ago marketing campaigns might not apply, the New Zealand import says it feels no different to him. "Yeah, but I don't feel old," van Gisbergen said this past Saturday before Cup Series qualifying at Phoenix Raceway. "I don't know, it's just a number." Van Gisbergen may be the oldest Sunoco Rookie of the Year since Andy Lally won in 2011 at the same age, or 40-year-old Mike Skinner (1997) and 47-year-old Dick Trickle (1989) before them. But the Trackhouse Racing driver is also the most decorated honoree in modern NASCAR history, riding a stellar five-win season and maiden appearance in the Cup Series Playoffs to seal the award. RELATED: Final Cup Series standings | 2026 schedule The honor became official at the conclusion of the Cup Series season Sunday at Phoenix, then was set to be made official-official in Tuesday's NASCAR Awards celebration. The contest, though, had been virtually decided far earlier as SVG's victories in five of the six road-course events on the Cup Series schedule began to mount. He easily outdistanced fellow rookie Riley Herbst, who was 35th in the final series standings. Van Gisbergen resided in that same outside-the-top-30 domain for a significant section of the season's first half as he attempted to make incremental gains on oval tracks -- a new motorsports discipline that's a departure from his extensive road-racing background. The learning process -- both for him and No. 88 crew chief Stephen Doran, in just his second Cup season -- was a difficult but valuable one. "Although it was a struggle, it was a good struggle to go through, and I feel like we ground it out and got better as a team together," van Gisbergen said. "It was pretty cool. ... Like, you go through that frustration, but no one's angry at each other that we have a lot to learn as a team. You know, Stephen was a pretty new crew chief, and the driver was the problem at that stage. It was all new to me, so I think we kind of built up together. Yeah, we were a 35th-, 36th-place car at the start of the year, and it's amazing where we're at now compared to where we started." Van Gisbergen's progress on ovals started to show palpable results in the latter stages of the season. SVG secured his first oval-track top 10 in 10th place in September at Kansas Speedway, then notched steady results in 11th in October at Talladega Superspeedway and 14th at Martinsville Speedway. Part of the maturation process involved going back to tracks for a second time, which van Gisbergen said should help him improve even further with return trips in his second Cup Series campaign next year. The other part was establishing trust in his car's behavior, especially on the intermediate-sized ovals. "There's just been lots of things like that, learning how the car dynamics work," van Gisbergen said. "You know, tracks like Vegas when you're going so fast and when you go slow into the corner, the cars don't feel that way. You got to go in flat, land in the banking and then see what the car does, and it's pretty eye-opening to tell yourself just to tighten the belts and grow some balls and drive in flat. Like it's tough, this stuff, and yeah, it's just taken me a while to get used to it." SVG now sits at exactly 50 Cup Series starts. Five of his six career wins came this year, two seasons removed from his victorious NASCAR debut in the 2023 Chicago Street Race. MORE: Rookie winners in the Cup Series | All-time NASCAR road-course winners While van Gisbergen might not be on the brink of an oval-track win, at least one of his Trackhouse teammates envisions the day that his signature victory celebration materializes on an oval. "There's a chance," says Ross Chastain, who joined Trackhouse in 2022. "I think Stephen and his group on the 88 are definitely finding their stride on that and what he needs, and yes, I could see rugby balls flying over the grandstands at an oval track." Making adjustments and gathering information should help van Gisbergen's progress grow next year, when SVG will team with Chastain and another promising rookie in Connor Zilisch, who makes the move from the Xfinity Series to Cup in the offseason. Pressed to single out one aspect of his development, SVG pointed to the sum of all the parts. "I think it's just everything," van Gisbergen says. "I've gotten a lot better, the cars have gotten better, and yeah, just as the confidence grows, things start to snowball and momentum forms. It's just a continuation of many things. It's not just one thing, and it's all added up."