Photo: Triple Eight

Earl Bamber joins Shane van Gisbergen as co-driver for 2018 Supercars

Earl Bamber has been confirmed as co-driver to Shane van Gisbergen at Triple Eight Race Engineering for the 2018 Supercars championship season.

”To be honest, the Bathurst 1000 and going to Australia to do that race as a co-driver has been on my radar for a long time,” said Bamber.

The 27-year-old Kiwi won the 2017 FIA World Endurance Championship along with team-mates Timo Bernhard and Brendon Hartley for the Porsche factory team.

”Porsche has known I’ve wanted to do it, and 2018 is the first time where we haven’t had a calendar clash for the past three or four years. So as soon as I saw 2018 could be a possibility, I started to do some research. Shane is a good friend of mine, so we swapped some text messages and things started from there,” said Bamber.

”The category is just so cool. I watch every race no matter where I am, and if I can’t watch it live I have a social media ban so I can catch up with it later on and watch it ‘live’ without knowing what happened.”

Bamber replaces Matt Campbell as co-driver to van Gisbergen in the Holden team.

”There’s big shoes for me to fill because Matty (Matt Campbell) was doing such a good job, and that car will hopefully be fighting for a championship by the time the endurance races come around. I’ve got a lot to learn from Shane and the team and the learning curve will be very big, so I can’t wait to sit in one of the cars and start that,” said Bamber.