Denny Hamlin crowns Shane Van Gisbergen the NASCAR road course GOAT over Jeff Gordon and Tony Stewart 

Denny Hamlin recently spoke about Shane Van Gisbergen's place among the NASCAR legends as a road course racer. Gisbergen ended up taking his fourth win of the season, all four on road courses, at Watkins Glen on Sunday (Aug 10).

This was his fifth win in the Cup Series so far and took him to 8th on the all-time list. The drivers who are on the top three on the list in question are Chase Elliott (7 wins), Tony Stewart (8 wins) and Jeff Gordon (9 wins). But while there's still a few race wins left for Gisbergen to reach that echelon of NASCAR road course legends, Denny Hamlin believes otherwise.

Speaking on the recent episode of the Actions Detrimental podcast, Hamlin said:

"Is he the best race road course racer I've ever seen? Absolutely. I competed against the Tony Stewarts, the Jeff Gordons, all those guys. He's better than all of them. But the only thing you're going to have to mix this up to keep him from winning every single road course race is it's going to have to take something wacky." [15:10]

He further said on his podcast that in the Next Gen era, Shane Van Gisbergen is 'the most skilled.' Hamlin predicted that the only thing that can stop SVG from winning at the ROVAL, which could be his 5th road course win of the season, would be an untimely caution that 'completely screws him out of his track position.'

It's worth mentioning that in Denny Hamlin's case, even though he has 58 Cup wins to his name, only one has come at a road course. That was at Watkins Glen in 2016.

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Denny Hamlin predicts how far Shane Van Gisbergen will go into the playoffs

While Shane Van Gisbergen is 25th in the points standings, his wins have ensured his qualification for the playoffs. His playoff run and how far he'd go was a subject discussed on Actions Detrimental on which Denny Hamlin also gave his prediction.

When asked about his opinion on how far SVG would go in the playoffs and whether he'd make it to the Round of 8, Hamlin said [26:15]:

"It's 50/50. I say he goes to the round of eight just because Talladega is not in that one anymore. Talladega is now in the round of eight. Talladega decides who goes to the championship four now."

Hamlin claimed that in his opinion, SVG wouldn't make it beyond the round of eight. With that said, he added that even on road courses, where all of Gisbergen's glory in NASCAR has come so far, he could get unlucky at some point.

The #11 driver emphasized on the 'unlucky' aspect instead of being outskilled or outpaced by others.