Kiwi Shane van Gisbergen has extended his lead atop the Australian Supercars championship with his seventh and eighth race victories of the season at Darwin.
After winning the opening six races of his 2021 campaign, the former champion hadn't tasted victory in more than a month, as he lined up for the weekend's second feature race at Hidden Valley Race Track.
Charging off the start-line, the Kiwi outpaced pole-sitter Will Davison to the first turn and was never headed, pitting on lap 14 of 38 and retaining an advantage that he held to the end.
Van Gisbergen had plummeted to 13th in Saturday's opening race, after leading into a disastrous pitstop that lasted almost 30 seconds, due to a troublesome wheel nut, and effectively robbed him of victory.
But he had no such problems on Sunday, finishing 1.5 seconds clear of Davison to stretch his championship to 207 points over rival Jamie Whincup.
"Got another good start, which was great," he says. "We just needed to get things right today.
"Pitstop was great and we just managed the race at the end, awesome! It hasn't made up for yesterday yet, but we've got this afternoon to go.
"We analysed things last night and put proceedures in place to make sure they didn't happen today, and a fall-back plan if it does."
Van Gisbergen then repeated the dose in the weekend's third and final race, chalking up his 48th career win - matching motorsport legend Peter Brock - in his 432nd outing.
For the third time in as many starts, the Kiwi was too fast for Davison off the start-line and was never headed.
The result extended his championship lead over Whincup to 221 points.
"Awesome," he says. "Again at the start, I don't know what happened, I got three beauties."
Next stop on the Supercars schedule is the Townsville 500 from July 9-11.
