"It felt very dead" - Shane van Gisbergen & Kevin Harvick discuss nuances between NASCAR Next Gen cars and Australia V8 Supercars

Australian V8 Supercars champion-turned-NASCAR superstar Shane van Gisbergen has been a phenomenon in the sport. From winning the inaugural Chicago City Street Race to announcing his full-time commitment to the sport, followers of stock car racing cannot seem to get enough of the Kiwi driver.

Having tasted success across two very similar yet different forms of motorsport around the world, van Gisbergen's appearance on Kevin Harvick's newfound podcast, Harvick Happy Hour, gave fans a sneak peek into the different driving styles involved with both.

The former Supercars driver and former NASCAR Cup Series driver talked about the same and van Gisbergen elaborated:

"You really felt the weight of the cars. It didn't feel alive at all, felt very dead and slippery on those tires. The throttle control was ridiculous, what you needed."

Shane van Gisbergen spoke about the peculiarity of the Xfinity Series car's H-pattern shifter and said:

"It's been hard now in that H-pattern. Sequential's easy, my rally car was sequential. At Daytona the first second to third shift going across the gate, I don't think I've ever used that muscle before."

It remains to be seen how Shane van Gisbergen will take to full-time NASCAR Cup Series racing once he progresses through the junior nationwide series.

---

Shane van Gisbergen breaks down cultural nuances between European and American racing

Hailing from the Australian V8 Supercars scene which is inadvertently quite heavily influenced by European racing culture, Shane van Gisbergen reacted to the shift in dynamics between teammates in America and elaborated on Kevin Harvick's new podcast.

Touching on the open nature of racing and sharing information in the United States, the Kiwi driver said:

"At the team I was at the end everything was open and the team worked much better together for us as drivers but at the start, at Stone Brothers, we had our sort of three cars and we all did our own thing and you kept a lot within yourself."

Meanwhile, the NASCAR Xfinity and Cup Series will be seen racing this weekend at Phoenix Raceway, marking the second race of the sport's West Coast swing across the country.