» V8s Hamilton: Van Gisbergen takes first win

Watch the highlights from Race 2 in Hamilton

After countless races of unfulfilled promise, Shane van Gisbergen has finally taken his maiden V8 Supercars race victory, and he could not have picked a better place to do it: in front of his home crowd at the ITM400 in the New Zealand city of Hamilton.

The baby-faced 21-year-old showed great mettle after a difficult opening race – where he embarrassingly crashed into the pit wall – to hold out against Gary Rogers’ driver Lee Holdsworth and TOLL HRT’s Garth Tander.

It was an outstanding result for all three, none of whom managed to finish in the top-fifteen places in yesterday’s first race.

Van Gisbergen’s home crowd erupted when the Ford Performance Racing driver took the chequered flag, which was also the first for the outfit on New Zealand soil.

The result sees van Gisbergen move to sixth in the Drivers’ Championship standing, which closed up dramatically after several of the championship frontrunners hit trouble in today’s 59-lap race.

In particular, Mark Winterbottom and Jamie Whincup both struck trouble in unison after getting tangled in a multi-car accident at Turn 3 that started when Michael Caruso spun at the corner. The carnage saw Winterbottom forced to retire his Ford, while Whincup limped to the pits for repairs and finished 18th, two laps adrift.

Having come into this weekend sitting inside the top-three in the championship standings, Winterbottom’s DNF drops him to sixth, while Whincup somehow still managed to hold onto his title lead, this time with Rick Kelly (the winner in yesterday’s first race) in second place and 81 points shy.

Kelly actually should have made it back-to-back podiums at Hamilton, but he clipped a tyre bundle at Turn 4 and dropped to sixth.

Will Davison wound up finishing in fourth place in the sister FPR entry, while Steve Owen mirrored his personal-best qualifying effort with fifth place in the race – another PB for the VIP Petfoods driver.

Rick Kelly, Alex Davison, Russell Ingall, Steven Johnson and Craig Lowndes (who also served a drive-through penalty for crossing over the pit exit blend line) completed the top-ten finishers.

V8 Supercars ITM400 Final Classification (Race 2 – 59 laps):

	Driver	Team	Result
1.	Shane van Gisbergen	SP Tool Racing	01:34:19:8748
2.	Lee Holdsworth	Fujitsu Racing GRM	+ 0.7827
3.	Garth Tander	TOLL Holden Racing Team	+ 6.2116
4.	Will Davison	Trading Post FPR	+ 8.3795
5.	Steve Owen	VIP Petfoods	+ 12.5273
6.	Rick Kelly	Jack Daniel’s Racing	+ 15.2856
7.	Alex Davison	Irwin Racing	+ 15.4074
8.	Russell Ingall	Supercheap Auto Racing	+ 15.9901
9.	Steven Johnson	Jim Beam Racing	+ 16.7432
10.	Craig Lowndes	Team Vodafone	+ 18.6275
11.	Jason Bright	Team BOC	+ 20.0527
12.	Jonathon Webb	Mother Energy Racing Team	+ 20.9837
13.	Karl Reindler	Fair Dinkum Sheds Racing	+ 23.7198
14.	Dean Fiore	Triple F Racing	+ 24.0775
15.	Todd Kelly	Jack Daniel’s Racing	+ 28.0479
16.	Warren Luff	Gulf Western Oil Racing	+ 33.9765
17.	James Moffat	Jim Beam	+ 1:00.9633
18.	Jamie Whincup	Team Vodafone	2 laps behind
19.	Paul Dumbrell	The Bottle-O Racing Team	3 laps behind
20.	David Reynolds	Stratco Racing	11 laps behind
	NOT CLASSIFIED
DNF	Tim Slade	Lucky 7 Racing	55 laps
DNF	Fabian Coulthard	Bundaberg Racing	55 laps
DNF	Tony D’Alberto	Wilson Security Racing	46 laps
DNF	Michael Caruso	Fujitsu Racing GRM	43 laps
DNF	Jason Bargwanna	Jana Living Racing	20 laps
DNF	Mark Winterbottom	Orrcon Steel FPR	19 laps
DNF	Greg Murphy	Pepsi Max Crew	9 laps
DNF	James Courtney	TOLL Holden Racing Team	3 laps