VAN GISBERGEN’S TRANS AM ADVENTURE DEAD BEFORE IT STARTS
By Timothy Neal
Date posted: 18 July 2022
The prospect of Shane van Gisbergen racing in Trans Am had generated a great deal of interest and excitement. With the Bathurst 6 Hour expected to be his first race prior to Covid getting in the way, it now seems it’s over before it began.
He was slated to drive the 6 Hour Production car support races in Tim Shaw’s #66 Chevrolet Camaro, but before it happened, he was forced to sit out the weekend.
Then it was a clash of schedules with the Le Mans 24 Hour race that kept him out of competing in Shaw’s Camaro at the Shannons Motorsport Australia Championships round at SMP.
But now it seems that for issues stated as “political” by Tim Shaw, van Gisbergen will be out of the Trans Am series altogether, just weeks before he was booked to compete at the Queensland Raceway’s round of Shannons Motorsport Australia Championships.
“It’s disappointing for us. We put in a lot of effort into getting Shane in the car,” said Shaw in a statement put out today.
“We had a successful test with him, it was a great day, and we were looking forward to a very competitive outing at Queensland raceway.
In the media release, Shaw said that he believed political pressures had put an end to SVG’s Trans Am adventure.
It seems possible that what Tim Shaw describes as “political pressure,” may be referring to an issue with Supercars.
Supercars could possibly see that one their superstar drivers racing in a rival Mustang versus Camaro series – not too dissimilar to the new Gen3 package – as being a bridge too far.
Considering that Triple Eight Racing doesn’t mind seeing him rip about the bush in a Skoda or driving a Ferrari 488 in the GTE-Pro category at Le Mans, it seems hard to imagine that new Triple Eight Racing general manager, Jamie Whincup, would have too much of an issue with him driving a Trans Am car at QLD Raceway.
So, it seems likely that if it’s true, and pressure was applied, that it could only have come from Supercars. If so, it’s odd given that a now major shareholder in Supercars is ARG, who also own the Trans Am series…
“It’s just very disappointing for motorsport, because the fans love to see Shane in the car,” Shaw said in his statement.
It would have been a great drawcard for the Motorsport Nationals event, and there is no doubt that it would have been interesting to see how the regular Trans Am racers would have compared to a driver and racer of SVG’s calibre.
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