van Gisbergen wins as Murphy seizes points lead

Greg Murphy seized a one-point lead in the BNT V8 SuperTourer championship while Shane van Gisbergen claimed a decisive victory in Race 1 at Pukekohe.

With two long races in the Mike Pero Pukekohe 500 Hankook Super Series meeting remaining tomorrow, the championship hangs in the balance with Hamilton driver Ant Pedersen losing his series lead after finishing fourth.

van Gisbergen and co-driver Alex Davison took the win in the 35-lap race from Murphy and Jack Perkins with Richard Moore and Tim Slade claiming third.

The Koba Ford driver van Gisbergen took the lead with a clean inside move at the second corner and streaked away from the field.

He handed the car over to Davison with a good lead and the Australian had no trouble carrying on to victory.

Murphy was pleased with the effort after sticking to a solid strategy.

“With the strategy we picked we’re happy,” Murphy said. “We’re ahead of Ant.”

Murphy maintained that strategies hold the key to the rest of the weekend highlighted by tyre management for the twin 70-lap races tomorrow.

Each car is still allowed only 10 new tyres for the weekend, plus any good tyres left over from earlier rounds.

“That’s good – it mixes it up,” Murphy said.

Pedersen and Australian Chaz Mostert started their Ford from ninth on the grid and steadily advanced to finish fourth.

van Gisbergen remains 26 points behind Pedersen with 620 points available tomorrow.

The effective points for the top three, discarding their worst round from earlier in the season sees Murphy on 3092, Pedersen (3091) and van Gisbergen third 3066.

Defending series champion Scott McLaughlin and new co-driver James Moffat brought their Holden through to fifth after starting outside the top 10.

Refuelling will be used for the first time in the category tomorrow and the timing of the pit stops to take on fuel will be an important part of each team’s strategy.

Simon Evans, who finished 18th, had a wild ride, spinning at close to 200km/h with the car rotating wildly down the track with concrete walls on both sides.

“The right rear tyre blew,” Evans said.

“I was trying to pick which wall I was going to hit. And I was worried that Scott McLaughlin was coming through and might hit me.”

In the end the car suffered only minor damage from a light brush with a wall.

The tyre failure was unfortunate because Evans and co-driver Jonny Reid had been running fourth in this star-studded field.

See below for race result