Is Shane van Gisbergen the GOAT of NASCAR road course racing after winning at Watkins Glen on Sunday? On The Teardown podcast, Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic debated how great van Gisbergen is after winning his fourth consecutive road course race.
Gluck believes that SVG is the GOAT as he’s winning these races by a wide margin. “I think it’s a little bit naive to say that Jeff Gordon in this same car, Tony Stewart in the same car, are beating SVG. Nobody’s beating SVG,” Gluck said. “…SVG is in the same stuff as everybody else, and he’s beating this field by over 10 seconds in a straight-up race. There’s nothing fluky about it.
Gluck went on to say that he doesn’t understand why people continue to doubt van Gisbergen. Gluck did a poll before the Watkins Glen race and revealed that more than half of the fans chose the field to win over SVG.
“This guy is the heavy favorite on every road course,” Gluck stated. “Not only does he do it again, he’s in control the whole race and by double-digit second margins in a super close era of NASCAR. This dude is unbelievable, and you can’t tell me that Jeff Gordon or Tony Stewart is getting in this car, or Juan Pablo Montoya… He is the GOAT.”
Is Shane van Gisbergen better than Jeff Gordon on road courses?
In Bianchi’s response, he explained why Shane van Gisbergen is not on the same level as Jeff Gordon. “Gordon was all-time, and he was so good that at that era, there were people thinking that he could have moved to Formula One and been competitive,” Bianchi said. “No offense to SVG, that conversation has been had.
“I’m not saying that SVG isn’t the greatest, but look at Gordon’s body of work, look at what he did, the number of wins. And it would have been interesting to see if there had been more road courses at the time, what his stats would have looked like even more.
According to DriverAverages.com, Gordon won nine road course races in his career and finished second five more times. When Gordon was competing, the two road courses that hosted NASCAR races were Watkins Glen and Sonoma.
Gordon won his nine road course races from 1997 to 2006. SVG has won his five road course races in three seasons, but this year is his first as a full-time NASCAR Cup Series driver. Gluck might be onto something if Shane van Gisbergen continues this trend.
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