Motorsport: Shane van Gisbergen's title bid spurred on by early success

Shane van Gisbergen dominated the Adelaide 500 last weekend. Photo / Getty Images

Kiwi Supercars driver and 2016 series champion Shane van Gisbergen is convinced he has the speed to win a second title in 2018.

The Red Bull Holden Racing driver won both races at the season-opening Adelaide 500 last week and announced himself as one of, if not the, championship favourite.

"We started the year like this last year with two wins but it is a long season," the 28-year-old said.

"We are going to have to grind it out. There are so many competitive cars here. We are obviously one of the top guys but we need to keep pushing, be there every round, make no mistakes and keep scoring the points."

It is a welcome result for van Gisbergen and his team, who have spent much of last season and the summer working on their new ZB Commodore.

While confident in what they were doing, it wasn't until they demonstrated their speed relative to their rivals that van Gisbergen could see how successful the project has been.

"It was always going to be tough building our new cars, trying to understand the differences," he said. "They look awesome, went well and quite different but it was really, really fast. To match the other guys, who were quick last year, the team has done a great job.

"We just worked hard, we had to do a lot of work. The amount of work at the shop to get the cars going has been pretty outstanding."

After sweeping the weekend van Gisbergen admitted he and the team celebrated in style Sunday night.

"It was awesome – everyone has been pushing so hard for so many months and we have not had time to get together and socialize so to enjoy [the celebrations] was pretty good."

The next round is at the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix in a fortnight.

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