VAN GIS WINS RACE 19 AT THE NTI TOWNSVILLE 500

Shane van Gisbergen won the opening race at the NTI Townsville 500 from Will Davison and Cameron Waters.  For van Gisbergen it was a better strategy that got him to the winner’s circle with a combination of hard and super soft compound tyres in use across the weekend.

The majority of cars took to the grid for the start of race 19, with Tim Slade and David Reynolds the notable exceptions and the pair carved through the field during the opening laps of the race. Slade climbed from 9th to 3rd on the opening lap and reeled in Davison, who had got the jump on pole sitter van Gisbergen off the line. By lap 12 it was Slade in the lead from Reynolds Davison and van Gisbergen.

BJR had Macauley Jones in the garage and Jack Smith down towards the rear of the order. Contact between the BJR teammates caused steering damage to both cars. James Golding was also struggling with steering problems after a clash with James Courtney in the opening 100 metres of the race.

Davison made his first stop on lap 30 and changed to a second set of hard tyres. Van Gisbergen ran another two laps then stopped longer than his rivals as the Red Bull Ampol Racing Team added substantially more fuel to the #97. While most added around 80 litres during the first stop, van Gisbergen was fuelled for longer, a decision that had the series leader questioning some performance issues directly linked to the heavier load.

By lap 50 Slade led by half a second from Davison, with a further 8 seconds to Mostert in 3rd. Shane van Gisbergen was next, a further 5 seconds in arrears.

The final set of stops were crucial to the final outcome of the race. Davison stopped on lap 56, which meant he had to manage the super soft tyre for 32 laps, while the heavier fuel load for van Gisbergen in his middle stint kept him circulating until lap 63.

There were some concerns for the van Gisbergen that the team had kept him out for too long as Davison enjoyed a 13 second gap to the #97 on lap 72 with the pair still separated by Chaz Mostert. The WAU driver was soon dispossessed from second by the Red Bull Ampol entry as Davison’s lead shrank to a little over a second and a half.

The pair were side-by-side onto the main straight at the commencement of lap 54, but a slight tail slide was enough to compromise Davison’s run down the main straight and van Gisbergen snatched the lead. The #97 edged out a comfortable gap at the chequered flag to take the win from Davison and Waters. The Monster Energy Mustang driver had snuck past Andre Heimgartner at the penultimate corner to deny the BJR driver of a podium finish.

“That was a great race. Real team strategy there,” van Gisbergen declared. “I thought we’d put ourselves a bit too far back in the middle but came home strong at the end. It was a good little battle with Will, his lines were awesome, he was driving really well.

“It was a good fun race, I enjoyed the battle, I’ve missed these 250km races like that,” Will Davison told Shell V-Power Racing media. “Without a Safety Car, it’s pretty full-on, so the old-time trial race, you know hearing times and managing weird gaps, hearing 20 plus seconds, but knowing it was going to come down to the last three or four laps is a very tricky way to manage.

“But yeah, we just ran our own race, and it was quite confusing, you don’t know who’s who and trying to keep the time trial and keep your pace up and coming up to cars who were a lap down or cars who started on the Super Soft, it was very easy to overheat your tyres. You just constantly trying to just be consistent and minimise mistakes.”

Photos: supplied

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