Shane van Gisbergen wins first NASCAR oval pole at Richmond Truck race

For the first time in any of the three national divisions, Shane van Gisbergen has secured a pole for a points-paying NASCAR race at an oval track.

He did snag pole position at North Wilkesboro in 2025, as part of the Cup Series All-Star weekend when he was competing in the Open race, and qualifying featured a pit stop.

But officially, this triumph at Richmond will be SVG's 13th career NASCAR pole and his very first at an oval track. It's also just his fifth career start in the Truck Series, driving the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet this weekend.

Van Gisbergen was the second-to-last truck onto the track, rocketing to the top of the charts with a 23.168s lap, 0.014s clear of Kaden Honeycutt in second. Chandler Smith will start third, Grant Enfinger fourth, and Nick Leitz fifth.

"Thank you to the Spire guys," said Van Gisbergen after the pole. "It's pretty awesome. We had a pretty good week and these guys helped me get comfortable. Pretty amazing to do that. I'm stoked and yeah, we'll see how it goes in the race. We got Cup practice and qualifying now. I don't know what to say, this is awesome."

On his development as a NASCAR driver, SVG added: "It's just time, just getting used to things, and these trucks are pretty similar to a Cup car, so it does translate and help me. So yeah, it's worth doing this. I can't thank these guys enough for helping me, and hopefully we'll have a good race tonight."

Van Gisbergen finished third in his most recent Truck start, running another oval at the North Wilkesboro short track. Richmond has been a good place for him as well, with a pair of top 15 finishes in his lone Cup/O'Reilly starts at the track.

He joins Daniel Suarez and Marcos Ambrose as the only foreign-born drivers to earn a pole position in each of NASCAR's top three national divisions.

The race, which was originally scheduled to run on Friday night, has since been postponed due to inclement weather, with plans to go green just after 12pm EST. on Saturday. After Christopher Bell bowed out of the event, SVG will be only driver attempting to run all 650 laps of racing between the two events on the same day.

UPDATE: Shane van Gisbergen finished fourth in the Richmond Truck race, rebounding from a mid-race pit road penalty.