SVG Won't Dwell on Weekend's End
A mechanical drama ended Shane van Gisbergen’s weekend at the Formula One Rolex Australian Grand Prix, but he is focused on the positives and another strong year.
Having achieved his goal of top five in 2013, there’s nowhere to go but up for the 24-year old – though he shied away from saying he was focused on winning the V8 Supercars Championship.
“I’m not sure,” he said of his goals for this season.
“I just want to be in contention and fighting every week.
“I just have to race a bit smarter, make less mistakes and I’m sure it can happen, it just has to go our way. But there’s, I reckon, about six guys who have a chance this year, a lot of quick cars.”
The Team TEKNO VIP Petfoods driver was untouchable during the first three races of the weekend, and while he started from the front in the final race, the Commodore dropped back through the field to finish 14th after a broken roll bar.
“That’s why we were so slow,” van Gisbergen told v8supercars.com.au.
“As I drove out the gate on the warm up lap warming up the tyres it wasn’t right. I tried to adjust, but went backwards straight away and I tried to stay out of everyone’s way.”
He sustained a reasonable amount of damage to the rear of the car.
“Unfortunately now we’ve got a lot of panels to fix – we were staying out of everyone’s way but there were a few drivers that managed to still hit me!
“But hopefully we’ll just straightened her up and get going… Most guys were pretty good and gave you room, but there were a few average ones.”
The double points finale meant despite his good work over the past three days, the Kiwi driver didn’t even finish on the podium on event points.
Van Gisbergen was disappointed for his crew, but takes positives from the weekend.
“The boys have done a great job all weekend so to at least be on the podium would’ve been nice. But we still had a good week, just unfortunate that happened, but car’s really fast, so, confidence in that now.”
Another positive – the Kiwi is loving the feel at TEKNO and isn’t concerned about its downsize to running one car.
“We’re a cruisy team we don’t make a big noise about it, just go about our racing as we can.
“It’s been fun. I’m liking the one car – it is tough doing it all yourself and not having a teammate to back up on when it’s not going right – but it’s ok.”
Van Gisbergen revealed he was signed for another year with the team, until the end of 2015.
“I’m really happy here, nothing wrong with the team at the moment, it’s a really cool place to be.”
He sits third in the Championship points, after finishing on the podium in the 250km race at the Clipsal 500.
