After an interesting discussion last week with Shane Van Gisbergen on his podcast about Dale Earnhardt Jr?driving supercars and the former’s strongest suit being the traditional heel-and-toe technique, the 15 times most popular driver award winner shed light on how SVG did in his debut oval race.

There is a group of fans who feel like SVG could have done better, but Dale Junior said what SVG did was quite impressive. He also illuminated why SVG might make it big in the NASCAR Cup Series.

Dale Earnhardt Jr’s take on SVG’s debut oval race

Shane Van Gisbergen had shocked the world with his debut NASCAR race in Chicago. He had re-created history after 60 long years of a driver winning his debut Cup Series race. Naturally, stock car racing enthusiasts had high hopes for this Kiwi icon.

Although he did not do anything shocking at Indianapolis Raceway Park, racing his #41 truck, he came out of the race and said that he learned a lot and had fun. And it clearly reflected on his performance at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway where he ran 82 laps and finished with a respectable top-10 position.

In one of the recent episodes of the Dale Jr Download, the host looked quite impressed with SVG’s oval endeavor. He said, “SVG ran the Truck race at IRP, I thought he did a good job, he lacked a little pace. Went lap down a couple times but it didn’t make the traditional mistakes, never ran a short track race before, never ran an oval before, you can get yourself tore up very easily, he did none of that.”

According to the owner of JR Motorsports, SVG did exactly what was expected out of a rookie; to watch and learn. He admitted, “He just stayed out of trouble and learned. And that’s what you gotta do. Run all the laps.”

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Junior said that he loves seeing drivers take up monumental challenges and strive to live up to them. And hence, his excitement for SVG’s future in the NASCAR Cup Series is understandable. Something that impressed Junior Earnhardt about the supercar sensation is that he refrained from making that one rookie mistake, which almost everyone makes.

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One cannot expect to hold the brush for the first time and paint like Van Gogh. In other words, it is good to be ambitious, but overdoing anything results in miserable setbacks. This is what SVG believes in and it has kept him out of any on-track crashes or squabbles. According to Dale Junior, this is the best approach for any rookie.

The NASCAR analyst for NBC felt like what Gisbergen did was a realistic goal. And setting a realistic goal is probably the first step toward success. He told Mike Davis, “You put a rookie or young talent out there on a track like that they want to surprise everybody. They want to run top 10, top 5 and they end up getting themselves in a lot of trouble trying to do too much. Obviously, with his age and experience, he’s smart enough not to do that.”

“And he didn’t ruin anyone’s race. That’s a great first step, I think, toward his oval crash course if you will,” he added.

With more oval experience, Shane can become a formidable threat to other Cup drivers. We look forward to that for sure. And probably does Dale Earnhardt Jr as well.

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