Following the birth of his second child last month, Scott Dixon has decided to pull out of the upcoming V8 Supercars Gold Coast 600 race. This left great kiwi hope Shane van Gisbergen without a co-driver for the glamour event but veteran Italian sportscar racer Emanuele Pirro will take Dixon’s place.

Now 49-years-of-age Pirro started his racing career in karts at the age of 11 and quickly progressed through the ranks to Formula One – where he raced in 40 grands prix, first for Benetton and later for Scuderia Italia.

After leaving Formula One, the Italian switched to touring cars, winning the Macau Guia race twice in 1991 and 1992 at the wheel of a BMW M3 Evolution, and the Italian Touring car championship in 1994 and 1995 driving for Audi.

New Zealand fans may remember Pirro as a four-time winner of the Nissan-Mobil Wellington waterfront race.

Further success followed in sports car racing, with three wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in three consecutive years (2000 to 2002) partnered with Frank Biela and Tom Kristensen for Audi Sport Team Joest. (more…)

Hard-charging V8 driver Shane van Gisbergen will team up fellow countryman and IndyCar star Scott Dixon for this year’s Armor All Gold Coast 600 in October.

Dixon, the two-time IndyCar Series champion and 2008 Indianapolis 500 winner drove last year for Jack Daniel’s Racing on the Gold Coast, however has elected to jump camps for the 2011 event.

“Surfers Paradise has always been a special place for me and anyone else that has raced there,” said Dixon. “It is almost like a home race for me having been born in Brisbane and raised in New Zealand. It is going to be like the Kiwi Super team with me driving with Shane in a car prepared by the Stone Brothers. Ross and Jimmy are obviously racing heroes in NZ and it is going to be pretty cool to drive for them. I enjoyed my first outing in a V8 Supercar with the Kelly boys last year and being part of an all-Kiwi assault will add even a bit more spice. (more…)

A spirited fightback drive saw Stone Brothers Racing kiwi driver Shane van Gisbergen cross the line fifth in the second race at the Sucrogen 400 V8 Supercar series meeting in Townsville last Sunday.

The result came following an 11th place finish in Saturday’s race and meant the 22-year-old driver has enough points to retain third place in the series points standings at the half-way point of this year’s competition.

After claiming his second series win of the season in Darwin last month, van Gisbergen headed back to Northern Australia with high hopes but struggled to find a qualifying set-up that worked and had to settle for 22nd on the grid for the first (72-lap) race of the weekend on Saturday.

Sunday’s second weekend qualifying session saw a major improvement – to 11th – but valuable time, not to mention track position, was lost during a Safety Car pit stop when van Gisbergen had to queue up behind teammate Alex Davison. (more…)

Stone Brothers Racing has just announced its driver pairings for the 2011 V8 Supercar Championship endurance events.

Returning to the driver’s seat in the #4 Irwin Racing Falcon will be experienced campaigner David Brabham, while in the #9 SP Tools Racing Falcon, Shane van Gisbergen will be supported once again by John McIntyre. Tim Slade in the #47 Lucky 7 Racing Falcon will pair up with Daniel Gaunt, who also returns to the SBR fold after a year at Dumbrell Motorsport.

Brabham and McIntyre’s inclusion means the team takes the same driver combinations in the #4 and #9 cars for this year’s assault on Phillip Island and Bathurst as they did in 2010.

Last year Brabham also raced with Davison at the Armor All Gold Coast 600, but is ineligible to compete as SBR’s international driver again this year under new rules which do not permit a co-driver to race in all three endurance events.

“Having drivers of the ilk of David, John and Daniel certainly won’t hurt our cause,” SBR Team Principal Ross Stone said. “All the guys have driven with us before so they understand and are comfortable with the way we do things, and fit in with the crew really well. Having this continuity also helps us when it comes to setting up the cars as our time with them is often limited,” he added. (more…)

Top Kiwi hope Shane van Gisbergen is confident of a good start to the 2011 V8 Supercar season after a strong test at Sydney’s Eastern Creek Raceway last weekend.

The 21-year-old who drives the SP Tools-backed #9 Ford Falcon for Queensland-based compatriots Ross and Jimmy Stone’s Stone Brothers Racing team set the second quickest lap time in the first session at the Sydney test day and says it was good to get back behind the wheel before the long flight to Abu Dhabi in the Middle East for the opening round of this season’s series in 10 days time.

“All round, ” he said, “it was a great day. After not being in the car for a couple of months you forget how quick they are but having said that by the end of the day you still want more power!”

Eastern Creek Raceway has not hosted a round of the V8 Supercar series since 2008, meaning all the teams at the test started off on the same footing.

“It was actually a nice change,” says van Gisbergen, ” because the circuit has a lot of different aspects to it that allow you to get a varied reading on how one change to a setting behaves across both a fast flowing sector as well as a couple of tighter corners which probably gives us a better reading on the car’s true pace and helps us perfect a good base from which to start next time we roll out of the truck.”

Last year’s Yas 400 meeting at the state-of-the-art Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi was one of van Gisbergen’s best, the young Kiwi setting the second quickest lap time in the first qualifying session then the ninth quickest time in the Top 10 Shootout before finishing sixth in the first 200 km race and third in the second.

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Top Kiwi in this year’s Australian V8 Supercar championship, Stone Brothers Racing driver Shane van Gisbergen, has cause for confidence heading into the final series round at Sydney’s Homebush street circuit this weekend.

The 21-year-old remains sixth in the series standings despite a late race crash robbing him of valuable points at the penultimate series round in Melbourne a fortnight ago. And if his form at the Gold Coast meeting in late October is anything to go by he should again be a force at Homebush this weekend.

“This year our car has suited the hotter tracks and also the street circuits. And this one (Homebush) is both! So the goal has definitely got to be getting back on the podium this weekend,” he said on Thursday.

After an impressive start and consistently strong results through the middle of the season van Gisbergen has had a trying second half of the season with a mystery engine problem slowing he and co-driver John McIntyre at Phillip Island and equipment failure (a broken bolt in the steering assembly) at Bathurst and Sandown.

Getting the most out of the car in qualifying has also been hard.

“Qualifying’s certainly our biggest weakness at the moment, but there’s nothing wrong with our race pace and though things have been a bit up and down of late I would definitely say that the highs outweigh the lows. We have had a lot of podiums this year and hopefully we will have another couple this weekend.”

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Over the weekend, BNT V8s race driver John McIntyre co-drove with fellow Kiwi Shane van Gisbergen to an excellent result – finishing second and third in the two races of the Gold Coast 600 V8 Supercar event.

Van Gisbergen’s battle with defending V8 Supercar champion Jamie Whincup in the final stretch of Sunday’s 300 km race was the stuff of legends with McIntyre commenting: “Getting to watch Shane race at the end there, he has matured so much, every time he goes out there he just improves so I really enjoyed watching him today.”

McIntyre has partnered the young Kiwi, one of the rising heroes of the intensely-competitive V8 Supercar series, in the three endurance events on this year’s V8 Supercar calendar: Phillip Island, Bathurst and Gold Coast. While McIntyre and van Gisbergen had the credentials to do well as the earlier events, an element of luck and the results they expected eluded the pair. But on the ocean-front Gold Coast street circuit it was time for the only all-Kiwi pairing to shine in the Kiwi-run Stone Brothers Racing Ford Falcon.

On Saturday van Gisbergen and McIntyre turned a starting position of 13th into third place on the first 300 km race. As predicted there was plenty of biff and barge on the concrete barrier-lined circuit with teams required to run an international driver in their driver line-up. The race had barely started when mayhem broke out on the fourth corner with several cars were caught up in a premature stoush and creating the first of three safety car periods.

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Driving for Stone Brothers Racing, the driver pairing of Shane van Gisbergen and John McIntyre is rated by many as the all-Kiwi team with the best chance of winning Australasia’s most famous motor race, the Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000, which is running this Sunday 10 October.

McIntyre, who has twice won the New Zealand V8 championship, says it’s exciting to be lining up with van Gisbergen at ‘the great race’, the star endurance events of the Australian V8 Supercar championship.

“The bookmakers have us as the top rated all-Kiwi driver pairing, so we’re not the only people expecting us to do well!” says the Nelson-based McIntyre.

“This is the first time that I’ve been driving in a car classed as one of the potential winners, so that’s a real highlight for me. It’s also the first time I’ve been contracted to drive at Bathurst two years in a row, so that gives me a lot of confidence that, together, Shane and I can do a great job in the #9 SP Tools Falcon.”

McIntyre says that they haven’t dwelled on not finishing as well as they’d hoped at the Phillip Island endurance round in September due to a misfire in the engine that started on lap seven. Despite that, the car continued running, albeit not at peak pace, for the entire 113 lap race.

“The team’s sorted the car, so you just get on and focus on your next race. For me, that’s been about continuing to push hard with my fitness as the main thing I can do to benefit my race preparation. Bathurst can have varied weather — if it’s hot, then your own fitness and ability to endure the heat are vital elements of your preparation.”

McIntyre says he and van Gisbergen want to win. “It’s that simple. We want to win Bathurst and together with the team we’ll develop a game plan in the day or so before the race on Sunday 10 October.”

McIntyre left New Zealand yesterday to meet up with SBR in Sydney before heading to the famous Mt Panorama circuit in the New South Wales town of Bathurst.

The team has three practice sessions on Thursday, two practice sessions and a qualifying session on Friday, another practice and the top ten shootout on Saturday before Sunday’s 1000 km race starting at 10:30am, Australian time.

Photo Credit: Stone Brothers Racing