Shane van Gisbergen was relieved to fightback to third having endured a frustrating Darwin weekend battling a balance issue with his Red Bull Holden.
The reigning Supercars champion has been critical of his Commodore’s feel throughout the meeting, which resulted in his team working until 1am this morning to find a fix.
After suffering a retirement in Saturday’s Race 11, van Gisbergen was able to drive around the problem to third, albeit 24 seconds adrift of race winner Scott McLaughlin (DJR Team Penske).
Van Gisbergen was glad to end a challenging weekend on a positive but says the problem continues to baffle the team.
“This whole weekend has been pretty tough on the #97 side of the garage,” said van Gisbergen.
“I haven’t been able to get a good feeling in the car and it felt like something has been wrong all weekend.
“I’ve been bitching and moaning but we have been fast. I didn’t have a good word to say about the car yesterday (Saturday).
“It has been a battle and we still haven’t got to the bottom of it, so I’m very happy to come away with a third with a poor feeling of performance.”
Triple Eight team manger Mark Dutton says the cause of the issue remains a mystery which is unlikely to be resolved at the workshop.
“It is hard one to solve as there is some baseline set-up things you do from track-to-track,” Dutton told Speedcafe.com.
“There might be some baseline changes for Townsville that fix the balance issue.
“It (the car) wasn’t responsive to changes and that is why Shane thought something was broken.”
A retirement on Saturday has contributed to van Gisbergen falling 78 points adrift of championship leader Fabian Coulthard.
While the gap has significantly increased, the New Zealander is not concerned about his title bid.
“I don’t really care (about the championship) at this stage, it was a shame yesterday,” van Gisbergen added.
“We have to be consistent but there is a long way to go in the championship, so from our side things we’re not quite right, and we have got to figure out why and come back stronger.”
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