Shane van Gisbergen gets first Triple Eight shakedown

Shane van Gisbergen completed his first drive behind the wheel of the #97 Holden Commodore of Triple Eight Race Engineering during a shakedown at Queensland Raceway today.

“It was good to get back into the V8 again – I’ve been driving a lot, but not V8s so it was good to drive a proper race car again! I really enjoyed it,” said van Gisbergen to v8supercars.com.au.

The team ran two newly constructed cars at the shakedown and reported no problems from the day.

“Today was just a systems check, the car ran faultlessly which was great, the guys have put in some long hours to get it going so to have two new cars run faultlessly and shakedown perfectly is pretty awesome – so credit to the guys for getting that done so well,” said van Gisbergen.

Also present at the run was Jamie Whincup who stood in for Craig Lowndes who is recovering from broken collarbone.

Lowndes is nonetheless confident he will be ready for the 2016 season start at the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide on March 3-6th.

“The test will probably also be a test for me too – so that will sort of take care of itself, I’ll get in the car and drive around. QR is not the most high loading circuit. It’s more focus on Clipsal, make sure we’re right – because we know the Clipsal street circuit is quite a demanding circuit on the body as well as the mind,” said Lowndes.