Shane van Gisbergen wasn’t overly confident he could win last night’s Supercars race at Sydney Motorsport Park after an early safety car upset his race strategy.
The championship leader was one of a handful of drivers to start the 250km race on the super soft tyres.
But a lap seven safety car meant the entire field decided to pit, including van Gisbergen who was behind teammate Jamie Whincup.
The double-stack in the pitlane dropped van Gisbergen to the fringe of the top ten.
However, a well-calculated strategy by Red Bull to put van Gisbergen back on the same set of super softs for the run home meant he charged through the field to claim a superb win.
“I thought it was done once we used the softs, but that was awesome,” he said.
This time, there were no repeated inter-team antics between van Gisbergen and Whincup, with the latter letting his faster teammate past in the final stint.
“Jamie let me through, which was nice of him. Makes up for last week.
“But thanks to the team. We lacked a bit in qualifying but in the race our cars were jets.”
The last stint was compounded by light showers of rain, which had been forecasted to hit all day.
Van Gisbergen says the slick conditions played into his hands as he quickly caught the drivers on the hard tyres.
“Some corners were slippery; some corners weren’t. But in the lights, you could see how wet it was.
“Thankfully, the hard tyre guys were struggling, and we could catch them. But, yeah, that was awesome and so much fun.”
Van Gisbergen’s championship lead is now 349 points, and he can wrap up the driver’s title tonight if he outscores Whincup in the final race.
“Hopefully we can finish it off [today].”