Shane van Gisbergen claims first victory of 2015 at Surfers Paradise

Shane van Gisbergen claimed his first V8 Supercars victory of 2015 in the first race of the weekend at the Gold Coast 600. The Holden driver won the race 1.6 seconds ahead of Rod Nash Racing’s David Reynolds Triple Eight’s and Craig Lowndes.

Tekno Autosports co-driver Jonathon Webb started the race and came under hard pressure initially from Volvo Polestar Racing driver Alexandre Prémat. But Webb was able to pull away as Prémat struck the curbs hard, damaging the right front of his Volvo.

Disaster continued for the Volvo duo as Scott McLaughlin took over the wheel with a power steering issue, seeing the Kiwi drop down to 21st position, 11 laps down.

While Van Gisbergen was on his own in the lead, the fight for second place was hard between Reynolds and Lowndes towards the end of the race. The Triple Eight Race Engineering driver tried his hardest to get past, but had to settle for third.

The fight for fourth was just as hard between the Holden Racing Team duo of Garth Tander and James Courtney, as well as Nissan Motorsport driver Rick Kelly. The Nissan driver tried to keep the Holden duo behind him, but struggled for grip and dropped down to finish ninth.

This left Tander and Courtney in a hard fight, making contact and swapping paint, with Tander coming out on top to finish fourth and Courtney fifth.

Nick Percat crossed the line in sixth position ahead of Fabian Coulthard and Scott Pye.

The race was a complete nightmare for Prodrive Racing Australia, seeing championship leader Mark Winterbottom colliding with Tander during a pitstop. Winterbottom was given a drive though penalty for an unsafe release and had to pit for repairs, losing 14 laps on the leader to finish second to last.

Disaster struck again not long after as team mate Cameron Waters, who substitutes for the injured Chaz Mostert, was given a drive through penalty for spinning the wheels during his pitstop, sending him down the order to finish 17th.

The race was one to forget for reigning champion Jamie Whincup as well with co-driver Paul Dumbrell colliding with Dean Canto on lap four, causing front-end damage to the #1 Holden Commodore and a lengthy pitstop. The stop dropped them 15 laps behind the leaders to ultimately finish 25th and last, with the incident going to be investigated after the race.

The second 300 kilometre race at Sufers Paradise starts tomorrow at 14:30 tomorrow local time.