Photo: V8 Supercars

Shane Van Gisbergen wins at Gold Coast ahead of Jamie Whincup

Shane Van Gisbergen won the first Gold Coast race with co-driver Jonathon Webb, beating Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Jamie Whincup and Paul Dumbrell by two seconds.
“Just over the moon. We played a different strategy there and I didn’t know what was going to happen… car was fantastic,” said Van Gisbergen to v8supercars.com.

The Tekno Autosports duo started from pole position, with Webb taking the first stint. Volvo Polestar Racing driver Scott McLaughlin was one of the few main drivers taking the first stint and claimed the lead early on.

But McLaughlin and co-driver Alexandre Prémat fell down to seventh position in the end with their pitstop strategy not working with one of the safety car sessions.

There was drama on the very last lap between Mark Winterbottom and Tim Slade for third position. Winterbottom gained quickly on Slade during the last couple of laps. The Ford driver bumped Slade a couple of times in the exit of the final corner which enabled him to drag past with a 0.0217 second margin past the chequered flag.

The stewards decided to penalise Winterbottom for the incident, dropping him to fourth position and promoting Slade/Tony D’Alberto to third.

There was drama at the start of the race as well with the co-driver duo of James Courtney and Greg Murphy retiring on the spot after making contact with the duo of David Reynolds and Dean Canto.

The top Nissan duo was the one of Michael Caruso and Taz Douglas in fifth position ahead of Chaz Mostert and Paul Morris in sixth position.

Scott Pye/Ask Walsh, Russell Ingall/Tim Blanchard and Garth Tander/Warren Luff rounded off the top ten.

The Triple Eight Race Engineering duo of Craig Lowndes and Steven Richards were in the top fight early on in the race but dropped to 18th position due to making an extra pitstop for repairs.

The Gold Coast 600 race weekend continues tomorrow with a final 300 kilometer race.