Shane van Gisbergen 2025 season in review
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Editor's note: This is the 19th in a series in which we review the top 30 drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series in reverse order of the 2025 final standings.
Driver: Shane van Gisbergen, No. 88 Trackhouse Racing Chevrolet
Crew chief: Stephen Doran
Final 2025 ranking: 12th
Key stats: 5 wins, 5 top fives, 7 top 10s, 312 laps led
How 2025 ended: Van Gisbergen's first full Cup Series season ended with a pair of significant accomplishments -- a spot in the playoffs and a runaway to Sunoco Rookie of the Year honors. SVG turned the circuit's road-course races into a near-monopoly, winning five of the six on the schedule to sew up his postseason footing. Though his title eligibility ended after the opening Round of 16, he closed out strong with a Charlotte Motor Speedway Roval win and steady improvement in the second half of the season on the oval tracks -- a trend that included his first oval top 10, at Kansas Speedway in September.
Best race: Any of van Gisbergen's quintet of wins could qualify here, but his romp to victory in the series' inaugural visit to Mexico City set that wave in motion. Van Gisbergen put his No. 88 Chevrolet on pole position in Saturday's qualifying session, then battled through a race-day stomach ailment to lead 60 of the 100 laps. His triumph was so thorough that his 16.567-second margin of victory was the Cup Series' largest in 15-plus years.
RELATED: 2026 Cup Series schedule | SVG driver page
Other season highlights: After his Mexico City mastery, two more wins by a margin of 10-plus seconds followed at Watkins Glen International and the Roval. SVG also converted for his second win in three tries at the Chicago Street Race, and he made it two in a row the next week at Sonoma Raceway, where he led 97 of the 110 laps. Van Gisbergen started on the front row in five of six road-course events in 2025, with Circuit of The Americas (started and finished sixth) the lone exception.
Stat to know: Van Gisbergen's rapid accumulation of wins became a point of distinction in 2025. His victory at Watkins Glen in August, in just his 38th Cup Series start, made him the first driver to hit the five-win mark that quickly since fellow road-race ace Dan Gurney reached that plateau in just 13 starts back in 1968.
Quotable: "It was kind of a season of two halves, it felt like. The first half was a lot of learning, but since Mexico, when we won our first race, it's all kind of clicked, and you get that confidence and momentum, you know, and it's just kind of built from Mexico. Yeah, the second half of the season's made it pretty easy to forget about the first half." -- Van Gisbergen, who was 33rd in Cup Series points before his Mexico win in mid-June turned his season around.
Looking ahead: Van Gisbergen indicated that little change was expected for his team's composition in the offseason, and that continuity should provide the 36-year-old New Zealander with a solid foundation for his second full-time campaign. SVG signed a multiyear contract extension Aug. 8, keeping him with Trackhouse for the foreseeable future. The one significant shift will be with his car number. Incoming rookie Connor Zilisch will fly the No. 88, and van Gisbergen will drive the No. 97, using a number that carries special meaning and tradition for his family and one that he campaigned faithfully in his rise to Supercar stardom Down Under.
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