Photo: V8 Supercars Media

Shane Van Gisbergen elated with first Bathurst pole position

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Tekno Autosports Shane Van Gisbergen is overjoyed with his first pole position at the Bathurst 1000, clocking around the Mount Panorama circuit with a time of 2:06.3267, and admitted he was inspired by fellow countryman Greg Murphy’s famous pole position lap from 2003 before he went out on track.

Van Gisbergen was second to last to run in the top ten shootout, which featured just nine cars following the withdrawal of the #2 Holden Racing Team entry, and set the best time in each sector to claim pole position in his Holden Commodore VE, which he’ll share with team manager Jonathon Webb tomorrow.

“That was pretty cool, pole at Bathurst is awesome, and it’s something you dream about,” said Van Gisvbergen. “I watched ‘The Lap of the Gods’ before I went out and got pretty pumped up. I saw what everyone was going time wise, and saw the track when I went out, it was pretty dirty as all the Utes had been going off the track, so you could feel on the out-lap it was pretty slippery, but I just knew what I had to do, and the car was pretty good considering, but it was just that the grip was low.

“I was losing time on my split to yesterday, but I didn’t get too stressed out, I just tried to keep it clean and didn’t want to muck up the last corner, so probably underbraked their a little bit, but it was still pretty exciting.”

Fabian Coulthard was last on the road after Van Gisbergen in the qualifying shootout, and with the Brad Jones Racing driver having broken the lap record yesterday, he seemed a strong threat for pole, but Coulthard was unable to replicate his pace from Friday and went on to qualify fifth, with Van Gisbergen admitting he was made to wait to find out the qualifying result.

“My engineer wouldn’t answer me,” he said. “I kept asking and asking, but I had no idea what happened, I saw no reaction from the crowd or anything, but then my engineer Steve just went nuts, so that was a pretty cool moment.”

The Bathurst 1000 gets underway at 10:30 AEST tomorrow, with a warm up session at 7:50.