Van Gisbergen Wins Race 1 Win at Bathurst

Photo: Jack Martin Photography/GTWC Australia

Shane van Gisbergen made a late-race pass on Garth Tander to give Triple Eight Engineering its maiden win in Fanatec GT World Challenge Australia powered by AWS in the first race of the weekend at Mt. Panorama.

The Kiwi, who is on a five-race win streak in Supercars competition, muscled his No. 888 Mercedes-AMG GT3 Evo around the pole-sitting Melbourne Performance Centre Audi R8 LMS GT3 Evo with less than nine minutes remaining in the 60-minute sprint Saturday in Bathurst.

Van Gisbergen and Tander went side-by-side up Mountain Straight, although van Gisbergen managed to take the position and extend the margin to 5.65 seconds by the checkered flag.

He shard top honors with Prince Jefri Ibrahim, who ran inside the top-ten in his opening stint on the Mountain.

Having led from pole, the No. 777 Audi of Yasser Shahin held off an impressive early race challenge from Brett Hobson’s Trophy class Nissan GT-R NISMO GT3 until the round of pit stops.

The No. 24 Audi Evo of Chas Mostert lost out on a chance of potential victory after being forced to serve a stop-and-go penalty for not meeting the car’s 105-second pit stop delta. 

It initially dropped Mostert from second to sixth although a late charge saw the Supercars star rebound to third in the end, thanks to a last-lap pass on the Trophy class-winning No. 55 Audi R8 LMS ultra of Brad Schumacher. 

The No. 4 Porsche 911 GT3 R of Stephen and Brenton Grove completed the top-five overall, despite having served a five-second additional hold during its pit stop for a start infringement. 

Adrian Deitz and David Wall took their Lamborghini Huracan GT3 Evo to a sixth place result ahead of Hobson, who faded to eighth in the Nissan.

All 17 starters were classified at the end of the race, which ran without any major incident or safety car period.

The second and final race of the weekend gets underway Sunday at 8:50 a.m. local time  (Saturday, 6:50 p.m. ET) with live coverage on SRO’s GT World YouTube page.

John Dagys

John Dagys is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Sportscar365. Dagys spent eight years as a motorsports correspondent for FOXSports.com and SPEED Channel and has contributed to numerous other motorsports publications worldwide. Contact John