Supercars news | Bathurst 1000 winner Shane van Gisbergen to make Sprintcar debut at Baypark Speedway
There’s no slowing down for Shane van Gisbergen.
Fresh off winning his third Supercars title, the Kiwi has confirmed he’ll head home just a few days after the season-ending Adelaide 500 to make his Sprintcar debut at Baypark Speedway.
The motorsport all-rounder hasn’t shied away from dabbling in different forms of motorsport.
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This year he contested the 24 Hours of Le Mans in a GTE entry and also made his FIA World Rally Championship debut at his home event, Rally New Zealand, where he claimed a class podium in WRC2.
Alongside his Supercars commitments, van Gisbergen also contested select rounds of GT World Challenge Australia on the SpeedSeries support card.
Now, the 33-year-old has a slew of speedway races on his radar, starting on Saturday in Tauranga at the North Island Sprintcar Championship meeting.
“They’re absolute beasts,” van Gisbergen told V8 Sleuth.
“Obviously you’re on dirt and you’re in an open-wheeler that’s 500kg with big aerodynamics and 900bhp.
“You sit in them like you’re in a bus. It’s the most foreign feeling but you get the biggest rush.
“The races last for five minutes but so much can happen. It’s crazy but I’ve always been a fan of it, so it’ll be a good challenge.
“I expect I’ll get my arse kicked but hopefully after five or six races I can start going half ok.”
It’s not the first time van Gisbergen has gone dirt racing.
He made a Midget cameo in 2020 but was stopped short of a full season after his former team boss Roland Dane saw van Gisbergen caught in the melee of a crash in his first event.
“I did one Midget race and then got the call to stop,” van Gisbergen explained.
“I got my arse kicked and then I hated not having the opportunity to get better the next week and improve. It’s stuck with me for a long time.
“I got the call from the guys I raced the Midget for, Brian Theobald and Shaun Insley, to ask if I wanted to drive their Sprintcar.
“I was surprised to get another call, and Jamie (Whincup, Triple Eight Race Engineering boss) said ‘yes’.”
The two-time Bathurst 1000 winner isn’t the first from Supercars land to try Sprintcar racing.
Tickford Racing’s Cameron Waters has spent plenty of time racing on the dirt ovals while Brodie Kostecki of Erebus Motorsport has also dipped his toes in.
Van Gisbergen has some prior Sprintcar experience, having sampled one in 2015, although it will be his first taste of wheel-to-wheel racing.
Van Gisbergen said he’s planning to do as much racing as his team allows him to before he has to head back across the Tasman for pre-season Supercars testing.
The Kiwi will carry his iconic No.97 across the summer of speedway.
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