Shane van Gisbergen has broken his victory drought, scoring a breakthrough 2020 double race win on the streets of Townsville.
The Kiwi scored his first victory of the season in race one of the day and backed it up with a storming drive in race two, to complete a stunning return to form.
The wins marked 200 and 201 for Van Gisbergen's Red Bull Holden Racing outfit, and a great championship lift for the No.97, whose campaign has stalled in recent weeks, drifting to 499 points behind championship leader Scott McLaughlin.
Starting fourth in race one, Van Gisbergen was second by the third corner and led after two of the 39 laps.
McLaughlin drove solidly to finish second ahead of championship rival Jamie Whincup, with pole-sitter Nick Percat fading to fourth.
Van Gisbergen ended up 8.4 seconds clear of McLaughlin at the flag - his first race win since Newcastle last year.
"It feels good," the Kiwi says. "The weeks we’ve had, my crew has never given up and to get a win like that... we smoked them, it was awesome.
"We put the [tyre] pressures up a little bit, so we were strong at the start and I just knew I had to get him [Percat] before everything overheated.
"It was pretty aggressive, but we got it done. It was a really cool race.
"Two hundred wins for Triple Eight, what a great feeling."
And the Kiwi produced an even better drive for his second victory of the day, after starting 12th.
Van Gisbergen was just ninth in the order for a safety car restart with nine laps to go, but had fresher tyres than anyone, after running a long first stint.
He was third three laps later, before teammate Jamie Whincup let him through with four to go to attack leader McLaughlin, whose tyres were fading, after an early stop.
By the end of the lap, Van Gisbergen had passed his fellow Kiwi and by running McLaughlin wide, he allowed teammate Whincup by as well.
"What an awesome race,” said van Gisbergen. "I got stuck in the first stint and it was going to be interesting trying to get back to the podium, but the safety car worked out perfectly.
"Big battle at the end, I tried to do the team thing to help Jamie, but awesome result."
McLaughlin cast an agitated figure afterwards, taking a shot at the Holden team for employing team tactics with several rounds left in the campaign.
"I had nothing left, I was trying my best," says McLaughlin.
"I think if we didn’t have the safety car, we might have been a real good shot. We were looking after our tyres there, but the safety car happened and I was just hanging on.
"Shane was playing the team game there. He’s made plenty of clean passes there over the years and that was pretty average, just a big push-off there.
"I get that he’s playing the team game, but it would have nice to have a bit more of a fair battle."
