“Went Gangbusters From There” – Shane Van Gisbergen Boss Justin Marks Hustles His Way Into NASCAR

Racing balls to the wall is not for the faint-hearted or the sloths. It takes real grit, commitment, and hours and hours of beating on one’s craft to become an ace driver, especially when you are competing against well-trained and tailor-made drivers like NASCAR’s new dawn from across the planet, Shane van Gisbergen.

Ahead of his much-anticipated return to the Cup Series schedule at the iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the Kiwi sensation went on a walk along with his boss, Justin Marks alongside, RACER’s Marshall Pruett as they went down the memory lane, reflecting on both of their humble beginnings.

Shane van Gisbergen’s Trackhouse Racing boss reveals his lesser-known days as an aspiring race car driver

Everything starts with a dream. Like the popular quote: Conceive, Belief, Achieve, one has to have a vision foreseeing the future. Now combine that with a proper plan and execution, and then we have a real self-made forged in hours of grind.

That pretty much sums up Trackhouse Racing co-owner, Justin Marks’s upbringing. Unlike his latest driver, SVG who exploded into the NASCAR scene following his outright domination in the organization’s first-ever street course, owing to his deep amateur roots and a strong backing from his family. Marks had to figure it out for himself.

While SVG’s father was an old-school racer who passed down the torch to his son early in his childhood, Marks hustled his through, getting himself into a racing academy, grinding, and forging himself in the fire. Recently, the boss-driver duo had a brief conversation with Marshall Pruett of RACER where Mark reflected upon his humble beginnings.

“I mean first and foremost I just grew up as a fan of racing, I mean my immediate family didn’t were not, they were not racers they didn’t know anything about racing, I just showed up and was like, hey I’m into this thing called car racing and they kind of had to react it.” said the former NASCAR driver. 

Though his grandfather and father took him to local race circuits, his career took a huge turn only when he went deep in the fray, getting himself into the Skip Barber Racing Academy before which he was your average racing fan, watching races and playing video games.

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He then quickly made a name for himself, racing in numerous series, even racing SVG in Rolex 24 hours of Daytona, meeting a couple of times on the track. He said, “I want to be a race car driver but I had never driven a car before so I went to Skip Barber Racing School, started racing the  SCCA in Northern California and 1969 Datsun 510 and just kind of went from there and it went really quickly for me. You mentioned Kevin Buckler, in 2001 I went to the Rolex 24 hours of Daytona and it was my like 16th or 18th car race ever so I just, when I was 17 or I was 18 years old so it was if I was going to do it it was time to do it and get going and then it just kind of went gangbusters from there,23 years later I’m here.”

SVG’s oval debut

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Unlike most budding drivers who had to claw their way through NASCAR’s lower-tier divisions like ARCA circles, Xfinity and Truck Series, 3-time Australian Supercar champion, Shane Van Gisbergen had it all as he flaunted his race craft to the world, utterly dominating the street course at Windy city, putting his fellow Cup Series drivers to shame.

After his grand success in Chicago, there have been a lot of rumors about the driver making a full-time entry into NASCAR and the driver has stated this to be true. And to be a full-timer in the elite Stock Car Racing series, the Kiwi first needs to figure out the traditional NASCAR oval circuit and that’s exactly what he had in mind when he debuted in Truck Series yesterday at IMS.

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SVG qualified 28th and put on a valiant effort finishing 19th in his first-ever oval race for Niece Motorsports Truck. Reacting to his oval venture, according to Supercars.com, the driver said, “It’s tough. It’s just all instinctive and reacting to it,” on the live telecast. Furthermore, he opened up about it, saying, “First lap, I didn’t get the most out of it and expected a bit much. I had a big slide out of Turn 2 onto the back straight — just getting used to it. Then, the second lap, I didn’t know what to expect. Had an awesome time getting better. Looks like I’m going to be right in the middle of it all at the start, so it’s going to be interesting.”