The trip to Daytona would have been a nervy one for Shane van Gisbergen. His two Cup Series wins must have felt like they happened ages ago, with a string of underwhelming results leaving him on the cusp of dropping out of the top 16. The goal was to score 45 points at the Coke Zero Sugar 400 and lock himself into the postseason. The race even started on a positive note for the New Zealander, before almost everything he feared came to pass right in front of him.

He held a 31-point lead over his closest bubble rival, RFK Racing’s Ryan Preece. A win for Preece would have all but ended his hopes. Then came the fuel disadvantage and a forced pit stop, which put the final nails in the coffin. However, when asked about it post-race, van Gisbergen insisted that his elimination wasn’t down to one bad night alone.

“I don’t put it down to him [Preece] winning tonight. It’s not a one-night loss. It’s, you know, I haven’t done a good enough job throughout the year. We’ve lost points at various places. We didn’t just lose it tonight,” the Trackhouse Racing driver said per Frontstretch’s Dalton Hopkins’ X post.

It would be unfair to call SVG’s season terrible. He did a fine job of shrugging off the “road course merchant” label, but he knows there’s still a long way to go before he’s seen as a genuine threat on ovals too. His two wins in 2026 came at Watkins Glen and Sonoma, both road courses, and he’s added five top-fives and seven top-tens overall. But since his fifth-place finish at North Wilkesboro, things have gone horribly for the Trackhouse driver.

SVG finished 16th at Indianapolis, 30th at Iowa, 14th at Richmond, 20th at New Hampshire, and 28th at Daytona on Saturday. The last one would have stung the most, considering it was shaping up to be one of his best oval results. He even won Stage 1, the first-ever stage win on an oval in the Cup Series. But he scored zero points in Stage 2, while Preece worked his way into the top 10. Things would only get worse from there.

With 10 laps to go, van Gisbergen was running 12th and looked set to score just enough points to make the Chase. However, his No. 97 Chevrolet was burning fuel less efficiently than Preece’s Ford, forcing SVG to pit. That dropped him to 27th heading into the overtime restart, while Preece stayed out. Any hopes of a comeback were then shattered when a multi-car wreck on the final lap of overtime caught SVG, leaving him to cross the line in 28th.

Meanwhile, Preece took the lead from Zane Smith just before the caution came out and froze the running order. It resulted in a 48-point swing in Preece’s favor. The RFK Racing driver, who started the year with a win in the Clash, now ends the regular season with his first-ever Cup Series victory.

Of course, had things gone differently at Daytona, SVG may have been the one preparing for the Chase instead of Preece. But as he pointed out, Preece had been gradually making up ground over the last few weeks. Since North Wilkesboro, he had finished 10th, 8th, 20th, 17th, and 9th before winning at Daytona. The results were better, and eventually, they paid off.

It’s now time for van Gisbergen to use these last 10 races of 2026 to simply try and get even better on ovals. He admitted that the No. 77 camp will be relaxed now and will be looking to try new things out.

“I guess we can try things now. We can take a bit more risk and just have some fun, low stress, and have a crack at it,” van Gisbergen added.

The disappointment of Daytona and the 2026 season as a whole is now behind him. Missing the Chase hurts, but these next 10 races give him a chance to keep building on the progress he has made this year.