Shane van Gisbergen continues to lead the Repco Supercars Championship, 338-points ahead of Red Bull Ampol Racing team mate Jamie Whicup with Shell V-Power Racing’s Will Davison in third, after the Sydney Supernight round over the weekend.
After finishing second to Anton De Pasquale in Race 20 on Saturday, the Kiwi won Race 21 and finished fourth in Race 22 on Sunday.
“I had another awesome first lap in today’s first race,” said van Gisbergen. “I pulled the right moves again and that put us in the right position. The car was good and the tyre life was great again.
“Will (Davison) had an issue in the pits so we were right on his bumper, and our pit stop was faster than his – the boys did an awesome job which gave us track position and we managed to run down the other cars.
“That race was a real team win – the guys did a great job with the strategy.
“In the second race, I was only really following Jamie (Whincup). We pitted early to try and jump him and catch up to the guys up the front, but the older tyres at the end really hurt us.
“We had a fun battle, and he pulled a nice move and got me back, but at the end of the day we were a fourth placed car.”
Team mate Whincup kept in the championship hunt over the round finishing ninth in R20, seventh in R21 and then on the podium in third in Race 22.
“We made a few changes for qualifying this morning and we were definitely better,” said Whincup. “Instead of being eighth like we were yesterday, we were hitting our straps in third and fourth position which was really encouraging.
“We thought we’d made a gain in qualifying but went into the race and we just looked silly again. I could see people at home saying ‘what are these people doing?’ I was almost a bit embarrassed, so we made a serious change after the first race, and the car was much better for the second race today.
“Once you have a car you feel confident and comfortable in, you can make a real fight and I was very happy to get some champagne at the end of the weekend to round off what’s been a really tough week. The guys in front are a good step up, but we’re not going to throw all of our toys out of the pram – we were a good step up in Townsville so you can’t be fast everywhere, but we’ll go hunting during the week.”
The final race (22) of the round was won by De Pasquale after he was disqualified from R21 after his car was fitted with an incorrect tyre during his compulsory pitstop.
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