With a mid-season break between the Townsville and Phillip Island rounds of this year's V8 Supercar series, SP Tools-backed Stone Brothers Racing young gun Shane van Gisbergen returned 'home' to New Zealand for a quick breather this week. We caught up with him and posed these questions...
Q) First of all, welcome 'home' Shane. It's good to see you back, particularly after such a stellar first half of the 2010 season. First things first. In your own words, how do you rate your season so far? You must be fairly happy with regular podium visits and fourth overall in the points standings heading into the endurance races and second half of the season?
A) For sure, it's been a busy but really good start to the year. We are all pretty happy with how the season has gone and being 4th in the points standings so far is within our goals for the year. We are still a little bit off the front couple of guys in the points but it can all turn around pretty quickly. I'm not thinking about the championship too much I'm focusing on the 3 endurance races and I'll think about the championship after them.
Q) You've now been doing this for - what? - three full seasons (your first race being at Oran Park in Sept 2007). If anything it looks like the series has got even more competitive in that time. Is that true? And if so can you give us some examples of how close it is, particuarly at the front of the field where you're running?
A) Yeah definitely, all the teams are doing a good job and it's very hard to gain a big advantage car wise. We are lacking a bit in qualifying mainly, that saying we have had a few top 10 positions this year but at a track like Townsville for example, on the Saturday I qualified 6th. But on the Sunday I was 23rd with exactly the same time. We just didn't adjust our car well enough to the track conditions. I think we were about 6 tenths off being in the top 5 so it shows how competitive the series is.
Q) It's been a pretty complex year in terms of tracks (starting in the Middle East), cars (new engine regs), tyres (greater use of the sticky tyre including for a full race at selected events) etc etc. Yet you and your engineer seem to have got it right most of the time. Without giving away any trade secrets can you, perhaps, give us an insight into how you, your engineer and your team have been able to maximise the potential of the car given so many different variables (race length, temperature difference across different events etc etc)?
A) We learnt a lot last year with the soft tyre and that definitely helped us get the most out of it in the races so far this year. There have been a lot of rule changes as you say to race formats, fuel tank size etc. But working with my engineer Paul Forgie we have been able to get on top of most things pretty quickly. We work well at the track with changes to the car and we are understanding each other a lot better.
Q) Before we leave the subject, you've had some stunning individual races. Can you nominate a favourite race (or event) this year? And if you can, why?
A) I think QLD Raceway was my favourite race in the first part of the season. We had a really good car on the soft tyres and we qualified well both days. Both races we had a similar strategy of taking it easy in the first 2/3s of the race on the tyres and the car and the last part of the race was a sprint. It was hard as a driver to sacrifice laptime and track position but it was all worth it coming back through at the end and getting onto the podium both days.
Q) That's it for the tricky questions. Now the easy ones. It's been a funny old season with a break earlier on with no Perth race and now a big break before the first of the enduro events at Phillip Island. So the first question is, what have you been up to in this latest break? Bit of a holiday down south? etc and I see you have to be back in Oz for the Leyburn Sprints meeting later this month?
A) It has been a good start to the year from a driving point of view, It was mainly a week on, a week off which made it feel like we were always in the car and it was awesome. So having a 9 week break now just feels so long! It's good though I've come back to NZ to see the family and friends. Myself and a couple of mates went down to Mt Hutt in Christchurch and had a few good days snowboarding. I spent a fair bit of time taking snow samples as I was a rookie. But I've been out on the motorbike a few times and had a couple of good rides. It's good to have some time off and have some fun doing the stuff I grew up doing. I've got the Leyburn sprints next week which I think I'm driving an Escort in which should be a lot of fun. After that we have a couple of test days which Johnny Mac will be getting a lot of laps which will certainly be good in the lead up to our endurance races.
