As NASCAR’s undisputed road-course king, Shane van Gisbergen is now headed into the June 21 Anduril 250 at Naval Base Coronado. Given his staggering resume, including seven Cup Series road course wins (just two wins shy of Hall of Famer Jeff Gordon’s nine), van Gisbergen makes perfect sense as the biggest favorite in years. Yet, the New Zealand native refuses to support the narrative.

“It pisses me off a bit,” the racer reportedly said. “I feel like it disrespects my competition. I hold my competition at a really high level. So, I feel like I’ve spent the last little while talking myself down because I know there are probably 10 guys that can win on pure pace, and in NASCAR, so much stuff can happen in strategy and stages that there are even more guys that can win. So, I don’t think it’s going to be easy, that’s for sure.”

Here’s the thing, though: Shane Van Gisbergen’s track record backs it up. Every single one of his seven Cup wins has come on a road or street course. San Diego plays right into his hands, too. Nobody has track data or raced it before. And if we go by historical precedence, that’s exactly the kind of blank slate SVG excels at. Case in point, the 37-year-old won his Cup Series debut race at the Chicago Street Race back in 2023 and the first Cup race ever held in Mexico City in 2025. He also has the longest active top-five streak on road courses and has been running inside the Top-10 for 95 percent of his road course since 2025, per reports.

No wonder The Athletic’s Jeff Gluck and Jordan Bianchi also doubled down on SVG.

The only person who can take down SVG is SVG — or some fluke circumstance,” Gluck stated. “There’s always a chance his car could break or he could get caught up in some weird crash. Other than that, the race should be in his control, and he should absolutely destroy the field. It’s very rare to see a driver with minus-money odds, but SVG is justifiably a heavy favorite. A track like this is really his world, and everyone else is just living in it.

“Presuming the track doesn’t open up and swallow him whole, or his car doesn’t suffer a mechanical failure, SVG will win,” Bianchi said. “The real question is by how much.”

Now, that’s a lot of weight to carry into a race weekend. So it was probably good timing that SVG got a breather from all of it.

A Visit From Home for Shane Van Gisbergen

Thursday, the All Whites showed up. New Zealand’s national football team is training in Southern California ahead of the World Cup, and since San Diego wasn’t far, the whole squad swung by to see their guy.

Shane Van Gisbergen gave them the full garage tour, walked them through his No. 97 Chevy, showed them the safety gear, and talked them through the cockpit. They returned the favor with a personalized team jersey and a block of Whittaker’s chocolate, the kind of thing every Kiwi abroad misses. Somewhere in there, a few players started ribbing SVG about giving driving lessons to teammate Elijah Just, who apparently isn’t great behind the wheel of the team van.

It wasn’t just a fun moment for the cameras, either. Trackhouse has spent years building itself into something bigger than a regular race team.

Their PROJECT91 program has already brought in names like F1 champion Kimi Räikkönen. SVG was one of those signings, too. So when a national football team shows up at a NASCAR garage, that’s not luck. That’s the plan working exactly the way Trackhouse drew it up.