Burn rubber

Shane van Gisbergen appeared to bounce back from a difficult morning at Sydney Motorsport Park, but the Kiwi talked down his final practice result, attributing it to good rubber.

Van Gisbergen finished the session third, running the speedy Dunlop soft tyre, behind pace setter and Pepsi Max driver Chaz Mostert and Supercheap Auto's Tim Slade.

The day started with the Darrell Lea STIX Commodore stopped and suffering mechanical issues during the half-hour additional driver session with Jonathon Webb behind the wheel.

There was an intermittent power steering issue in the secondhour-long session, and during practice van Gisbergen was sliding all over the road, spinning off and calling the car "ugly" as he and the team tried to tune it to the tricky circuit.

"I think in that session a good tyre made us look better than we were," van Gisbergen said.

"You can always look good with the rear as loose as possible for one lap but over a race we'd struggle to make it work like that. Not fully happy but definitely better."

Today's drama continued on from a difficult few rounds - and back in ninth position and 579 points from Championship leader Mark Winterbottom, van Gisbergen looks a long way from the title chance he was labeled at the start of the season.

"It has been a bit frustrating but we're working hard trying so many different things and backing our own directional set up," he said.

"In the morning session I was off the track more than I was on it which wasn't fun. Normally I think I'm alright in a sliding car but I spun out probably three times today."

Van Gisbergen debuted a new Triple Eight-built chassis at Darwin, and while it ran without fault that weekend, he was caught in incidents at the round that didn't show his full potential.

Since then it has been a hard slog with a range of dramas in Townsville, including a vibration that cut most of Friday's running time and a penalty that placed him at the back of the grid. Then there was the gearbox casing cracking on the start line of the second 60km race at Ipswich.

"Our car has been a bit of a battle the last few rounds, so trying a whole lot of things and a different direction to make it work - so it's a bit of a struggle to be honest," van Gisbergen said.

"Since we've been with this new car we had one good round at Darwin where the surface was different to everywhere we go, and then we're back on the normal surface and we've really struggled."

While TEKNO is a customer of Triple Eight, van Gisbergen has been talking about the team taking its own direction with the setup.

Funnily enough, van Gisbergen will move to Tripe Eight next season, after signing a multi-year deal with the Roland Dane-run operation earlier this year.

"We tried to be closer to Triple Eight and the cars are just too different now," van Gisbergen said.

"We're still running the car as we got it in 2013 and they've obviously come a long way.

"It doesn't really work for us when we put their setups in, so we've gone back to our way.

"It's never going to be good going back straight away but hopefully we can get it back to what we were."

The Triple Eight/Red Bull Racing Australia Commodores of Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes finished 13th and 19th respectively in the day's second practice session.

Van Gisbergen won both races at Sydney Motorsport Park last year on Saturday in spectacular form in wet conditions.