Shane van Gisbergen and Jonathon Webb have taken a dominant victory at the Gold Coast 600 in Race 26 followed by a top 5 finish in Race 27 ends a successful weekend for Team Darrell Lea STIX.



The XFORCE sponsored TEKNO Commodore blazed in the opening laps of Saturday’s race with co-driver Webb behind the wheel and held a comfortable lead for the majority of the 102-lap race, with van Gisbergen earning his first win for 2015 and converting his ARMOR ALL Pole Position.



Jonno started the #97 Holden from pole position and built a 10 second lead by the time the minimum 34 co-driver laps were completed. Van Gisbergen was then untroubled through his two stints to the flag, controlling a late Safety Car restart on the way to victory.

“… once I got off the start and into bit of a clear track, by the time I got to turn 4 I just concentrated on my own race, had a lap time in mind and chased it as best I could. Tried not to leave any marks or scraps or take any mirrors off so Shane had a brand new one when I gave it over and thankfully that was what I was able to do.” Jonno on his initial 34 lap stint.

“The car’s just been phenomenal the whole weekend, we haven’t changed much, just little stuff. It’s just been amazing and to get all three sessions today is pretty cool.” Shane said after taking out the top spot in qualifying, the top ten shootout and Saturday’s 300km race.



In typical flamboyant fashion SVG lit up the rear tyres of his Darrell Lea STIX Commodore in post-race celebrations as pictured above. “The boys worked so hard, we’ve had a very good car at some stages of the year but haven’t managed to lock it away. So thought we’d better do it in style.” an ecstatic van Gisbergen said after taking his first win for the season.



In race 27 the #97 started fourth but after an ill-timed safety car deployed mid-race Jonno and Shane lost vital track position before powering back through the field to an eventual fifth place finish as others attempted to manage their fuel consumption.

“Quali in the morning was pretty good, because we made the shootout the day before we were down a set of tyres so that made it a bit harder. It was pretty good, we had a couple of runs and probably didn’t get it all together so we ended up third but to be that fast and not get it all perfect was good.

“We got in a good position again, thanks to Jonno he did a great job both days. We didn’t have great pace on the hards but our car was always going to be better on softs the way it was handling, and it was it was pretty fast there but strategy just didn’t work out the best for us. We decided that we weren’t going to make it on fuel so we pitted but some guys who rolled the dice stayed out and saved a lot of fuel, they did a great job to make it and we weren’t just able to do that. We were second of the guys on our strategy and had a really good race coming back and passing them but couldn’t reel in the front rowers.” van Gisbergen said.



The #97 Darrell Lea STIX Commodore is next on track at the ITM 500 Auckland 6 – 8 November 2015.