Shane van Gisbergen says that breaking the record for race wins in a single Repco Supercars Championship season is “pretty special” given the current lack of controversy about parity.
The Red Bull Ampol Racing driver’s victory in the Repco Bathurst 1000 was his 19th of the campaign, one more than the previous benchmark which belonged to Scott McLaughlin.
That was established in 2019, the first year of competition for the Gen2 Ford Mustang, the introduction of which set off a succession of parity adjustments across the three models of vehicle in the field.
After a rehomologation of the Mustang and ZB Commodore ahead of the 2020 campaign, the technical regulations have been virtually frozen ever since.
McLaughlin still won the championship with an event to spare in 2020, his last season before heading to the United States to race in IndyCar, while van Gisbergen has dominated since.
However, that dominance, at least this year, has been achieved through race speed and/or smarts rather than qualifying pace, with the 19 victories far outweighing his seven pole positions so far, of which six have been converted to wins.
Asked how it felt to beat the record, van Gisbergen said, “I might upset some people, but it is a pretty special thing to do without all the calls of parity and stuff.
“It makes me feel like, as a team, we’ve done such a good job.
“I feel like we’re not the best in qualifying, we’re not the fastest car, but in the races, we seem to execute it.
“Working with Andrew [Edwards, new-for-2022 engineer] this year, he’s been fantastic.
“When we’re under pressure when things aren’t so good, the way he tunes the car up and goes about it, along with the rest of the engineering group, I think we’re in a pretty special place at the moment.
“Obviously, it’s going to change next year and be a lot more difficult [when Gen3 is introduced], but this year has been very, very cool.”
McLaughlin, who won three races in this, his second full season of IndyCar, took to social media to pay tribute.
“This guy is a true racer,” he wrote.
“Someone I loved racing and beating, cause you knew you had beat the best on the day!
“I’m stoked at least another Kiwi grabbed the record! Congrats mate.”
Van Gisbergen leads the championship by 567 points with two events remaining and a total of 300 points on offer at each of the Gold Coast and Adelaide events.
He is therefore highly likely to wrap up a second straight title next weekend on the streets of Surfers Paradise, although the achievement would be unofficial until results for the last race of the season have been made final.
Practice 1 for the Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500 starts on Friday, October 28 at 12:35 local time/13:35 AEDT.
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