NASCAR fans have spotted a missing sponsor from Shane van Gisbergen’s No.97 team. Trackhouse Racing recently updated its website ahead of the 2026 season, and SVG’s major sponsor, Weather Tech, appears to be absent from the revised lineup.
Van Gisbergen made his full-time Cup Series debut last year. He claimed the Rookie of the Year honours after blitzing through the field with five road course wins. The New Zealander is a RedBull athlete who bore the WeatherTech logo throughout his rookie season.
However, the American car accessories company was nowhere to be found on Trackhouse’s website, as noted by a fan account on X:
“I don’t know if I missed something but I checked the Trackhouse website to see their partners and I noticed WeatherTech isn’t on the list… is WeatherTech not SVG’s sponsor anymore!?!?”
Shane van Gisbergen’s updated sponsor list includes Chevrolet, Busch Light, Choice Privileges, Jockey, Kubota, Moose, Quad Lock, Red Bull, Safety Culture, Siemens, Tootsies and Wendy’s.
Weather Tech was also a major sponsor for Connor Zilisch, SVG’s new Trackhouse Racing teammate. The two drivers had multiple head-to-head showdowns in the 2025 Xfinity Series season, proving their road course mettle at Watkins Glen, Sonoma and the Chicago Street Race.
SVG won at Chicago, while Zilisch nabbed a win at Sonoma, but Watkins Glen resulted in a contentious finish. With 18 laps to go, the JR Motorsports drivers were battling for the lead when Zilisch went wide at Turn 6. He clipped SVG’s rear upon re-entry and caused the No.9 Chevy to slide into the barriers.
Although Zilisch won the race, he ended up being the one transported to the medical center, as he slipped during victory lane celebrations and broke his collarbone.
Shane van Gisbergen reflects on ‘difficult’ rookie season
Shane van Gisbergen was recently featured in an interview with Speedcafe, where the Kiwi driver shared an honest assessment of his 2025 Cup Series season. Apart from his road course mastery, van Gisbergen largely faltered on ovals.
He consistently qualified outside the top-30 and had a tough time making up for it. The 36-year-old scored just two top-10s outside of his race wins, with one of them coming from a sixth-place finish at COTA, yet another road course. His best qualifying came from an 11th-place start at Indianapolis, where he ended up finishing 19th.
When asked about his rookie season in NASCAR’s top division, SVG said,
“It was very very difficult at the start especially. Combinations of things mainly rookie driver, I found the cars very different to the Xfinity series. I found that it almost would have been better just to go straight in, like everything I learned in Xfinity didn’t really make sense in the cup car the way it handles and just the way the dynamics of the car is. So yeah, I struggled a lot as a driver to start with and then combination of a new team really .”
“It took a while for us all to gel and for the car speed to get better. From mid-year onwards, we won Mexico, and then Ross won the Coke 600 as well, and then from there it just snowballed for the team,” he added.
Shane van Gisbergen’s regular-season wins earned him a spot in the playoffs, but he couldn’t make it past the round of 16. Meanwhile, his Trackhouse Racing teammate, Ross Chastain, entered the playoffs with just one win to his name, but managed to make it to the Round of 12.
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