Giz ‘ gutted and peed off’ but not ashamed by Bathurst effort
Reigning Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen is feeling more circumspect after last Sunday’s chaotic Bathurst 1000 seemed to slip through his fingers.
The 28- year- old Kiwi has endured some heartbreak in the iconic race in the past few years. A stalled engine in his final pit stop while leading a couple of years ago was a bitter pill to swallow while last year he missed winning the race by the closest competitive margin in the history of the race, settling for second behind Will Davison.
He added to that list in treacherous conditions last Sunday by spinning while leading at the penultimate safety car intervention and then throwing the car off at high speed and ripping a tyre from the rim as he got himself back into contention to win in the dying stages.
“It is just a crazy day — it is what that place is,” van Gisbergen said. “It throws everything at you and we tried to throw everything back but it didn’t come off in the end.
“Our car was not that good even as early as Thursday or Friday, I think not having the best car we were driving over the limit to try and be competitive and I think that is what made for the mistakes.
“If we had a bit more speed we probably wouldn’t had to have driven over the limit like that and done all that crazy stuff.
“Unfortunately the result wasn’t what we wanted.”
The Red Bull Holden driver’s aggression and passing moves late in the race were something to behold, making a case to say it was a blown op- portunity given the errors that followed.
Van Gisbergen admitted he was down after eventually finishing fifth but he is starting to see it differently.
“Afterwards I was pretty gutted and really pissed with myself but now, after a day or two to think about it, I gave it everything and we did make some mistakes but I am not ashamed of it at all,” he said.
“We tried our best and put on a good show. It was a pretty decent day and we gave it the best crack we could.”
His error while leading the race was avoidable but it wasn’t simply a case of an over- zealous driver.
“We were saving a lot of fuel, especially under safety car, and you don’t warm the tyres up because you are trying to roll and save all the fuel you can,” van Gisbergen explained. “It started raining on the run down Conrod — cold slicks on a wet track — I braked super early but I slid off and couldn’t stop.
“We managed to get back from that but went off at The Chase a few laps later.”
Despite the disappointing result, van Gisbergen has actually got himself back in the championship fight thanks to the dramas leading pair Scott McLaughlin and Jamie Whincup suffered.
He is fifth in the standings but only 289 points behind new leader Fabian Coulthard. He had been the best part of 400 points adrift before Bathurst.
Shane van Gisbergen
Winton JC J6