Shane van Gisbergen says engineering effort brought him into contention for race win

Supercars Championship Race 31 winner Shane van Gisbergen puts his turnaround from qualifying to a race win down to his team after the Triple Eight Race Engineering driver went from scraping into the Top Ten Shootout to pole position and then the victory.

Though he was fast in the #97 Holden Commodore on Friday, van Gisbergen was on the cusp of missing the shootout as he sat just outside the top ten late in the session, just squeezing in with a banzai lap for tenth place.

Starting last on the road, a mega shootout lap gave him pole position and reaffirmed the Triple Eight machine’s car pace, later backed up by a controlling 250km race where he never totally looked challenged.

When asked by TouringCarTimes in the post-race press conference as to just what he put the turnaround down to, van Gisbergen says his head engineer was the driving factor behind the change and the biggest factor in the dominant victory.

“I don’t think that was down to me, it was more Shippy (McPherson),” he said.

“My car’s been awesome, all the sessions we’ve led from the start, been really really fast but then we put a new tyre on it. Something I was doing or the car was doing or the tyre prep, we couldn’t work it out.

“That was on him studying and telling me what to do, what he did between qualifying and the shootout then I just drove out and made grip instantly. As soon as I weaved the tyres, I had grip.

“That strategy probably was a risk, putting me back in the traffic; I thought it was a huge tyre advantage but you lose time in dirty air. I started to get a bit worried there, not a single blue flag as well and you just get frustrated.

“He just managed the race really well, unbelievably good strategy and he did the job for us today.”

Triple Eight and van Gisbergen specifically have been fast in Newcastle over the past few years, aided this year by the Holden Commodores being fast at street tracks according to the race winner.

“Tracks like this, we enjoy, and our cars have gotten a lot better over the last few rounds.

“Obviously we’ve got a lot more rear (downforce), I still feel like the Fords have more front but when we all raise the cars up for the kerbs, it seems to affect them more than us.

“That helps us in some ways but when we go to fast tracks, we’re still lacking. At tracks like this I think we have an advantage at the moment.”

Looking to become the first driver to sweep the two races in a Newcastle weekend since the round’s inception in 2017, van Gisbergen is in good stead to take home the maximum 300 points over the round tomorrow.