Shane van Gisbergen: ‘I’m not going to back down or be threatened by someone’

HAMPTON, Ga. – Shane van Gisbergen got his first trip to NASCAR's principal office on Saturday at EchoPark Speedway, as officials summoned both him and Austin Hill to the NASCAR hauler for a 17-minute meeting following their on-track incident last weekend at Chicagoland Speedway. “I don’t really want to do it again,” van Gisbergen quipped about his maiden visit to the NASCAR hauler. RELATED: EchoPark lineup | At-track photos The duo has clashed three times in the last four races, beginning at Pocono Raceway. The following week at Naval Base Coronado, the No. 33 Chevrolet clipped the inside wall and ricocheted into the Trackhouse Racing duo of Connor Zilisch and van Gisbergen, ending both of their races. The two competitors stayed clear of each other at Sonoma Raceway, where van Gisbergen scored his second checkered flag of the season, holding off a mad fury from Chase Briscoe in the waning laps. It took only 48 laps for van Gisbergen and Hill to clash at Chicagoland, however. The No. 97 Chevrolet got into the rear of Hill’s No 33 car racing through Turns 3 and 4, ending the Richard Childress Racing driver’s evening. “I was racing hard and the outcome wasn’t what I wanted,” van Gisbergen said of the contact six days later. “I intended to run in there hard and get inside him and it didn’t work out. I definitely didn’t want to wreck a race car and didn’t want it to escalate – I don’t know if it’s a rivalry, but whatever it’s been between us the last three years. “We never seem to race well together. I don’t want to escalate it, and I’m the one with a lot to lose. It was a weird dynamic in the meeting and a weird way with how it ended.” Van Gisbergen felt like he was more remorseful of the two drivers in the closed-door meeting. But sitting 14th on The Chase grid, 30 points above the cutline, the New Zealander knows he has more to lose than Hill, who is chasing a championship in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series. “That’s what has always been cool about the sport, you can sort it out yourselves and then it gets to that point,” van Gisbergen stated. “To me, it’s at that point, but to him it’s not. He’s that kind of personality that feels like he’s got to get the last laugh and the last one to strike – and he threatened that, I guess. It is what it is. I will try to race clean and do my own thing, but I guess he’s on his own agenda.” MORE: Cup Series standings | How SVG/Hill feud got here Hill doesn’t have an answer for why the duo has tangled a handful of times since the beginning of the 2024 season. In van Gisbergen’s fifth race as a full-time NASCAR competitor at Circuit of The Americas, Hill shoved SVG wide on an overtime restart, moving to the race lead. Van Gisbergen laid the bumper back on the final lap, though Kyle Larson passed both cars to sneak by for the win. The pairing made contact later that season at Sonoma, with SVG pushing Hill off into the dirt. On the cool-down lap, van Gisbergen did an exuberant smoke show around the No. 21 car. Asked jokingly if Hill was "grunting" during the meeting – a reference to van Gisbergen’s response following last week's incident in Chicagoland – Hill said the two simply had a conversation. “NASCAR let us know what we need to do going forward,” he stated. “We’re going to go race and I’m looking forward to it.” While their driving styles differ in many ways, van Gisbergen believes he and Hill share a similar mentality. “I’m probably a bit more reserved than him, but I’m aggressive on track, I guess, you are always going to clash with people like that,” van Gisbergen said. “I don’t know, I’m not going to back down or be threatened by someone, but I don’t want to fight anyone, either.” Respect needs to be earned among the pair of Chevy drivers. They are restarting at Ground Zero this weekend, with van Gisbergen’s focus centered on remaining inside The Chase. “I’ve got to race with respect and start building that up and try cutting him breaks,” van Gisbergen noted. “If it doesn’t come my way, I don’t know how to fix him. I’m going to try to carry on and race clean, but obviously there is risk these next seven races. I’ve got to get into the top 16, right, and he’s probably going to try to threaten that. That kind of sucks, but it is what it is.” Van Gisbergen, who placed sixth in the spring at EchoPark, will take the green flag in 12th position for Sunday’s Quaker State 400 (7 p.m. ET, TNT Sports, truTV, HBO Max, PRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio). Hill, a drafting merchant in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, will line up 30th.