TAGS
Holden Commodore
Holden
Holden News
Motorsports
Race track
Triple Eight unveil drift-spec Red Bull Supercar for Van Gisbergen | video
6 October 2016 by
Tim Robson
Triple Eight unveil drift-spec Red Bull Supercar for Van Gisbergen | video
There's only one thing to do with a leftover Holden Commodore Supercar if you're Red Bull Racing Australia – and that's to give it to Gizzy to drift it.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that keeping a team of four Supercars – two Red Bull Racing Australia cars, a Team Vortex machine for Craig Lowndes and a satellite car for Tekno Autosports – at the front of the Supercars grid would be enough to keep a team busy. Not if you're Queensland's Triple Eight Race Engineering, it seems.
When six-time Supercars champion Jamie Whincup moved over to a new Red Bull Holden Commodore earlier in the 2016 season, his race-winning machine was deemed too good to spend the rest of its life as a passenger ride car.
The team's newest recruit, New Zealand hotshoe Shane van Gisbergen, is one of the most talented and versatile racers on the planet today, with wheel time in some of the most awesome race cars and on the best tracks on the planet.
The Supercars winner has just claimed a 2016 Blancpain Series endurance title with the factory McLaren team, for starters, and he has claimed class honours at events like the Daytona 24-Hour and Spa 24-Hour races in recent years.
He regularly races at places like the Nurburgring, Silverstone and anywhere else he can slide between a roll cage. Not content with the real thing, he's also a sponsored R/C car champion in his home country, and an online racer of some notoriety.
He's also a dab hand at the art of drifting, where holding a car in a state of power oversteer is the name of the game. One of his more famous YouTube moments sees him drifting almost the entire way around the Hidden Valley circuit after a win, a feat he repeated in Townsville earlier this year.
Over the last six months, the Triple Eight team modified 'Jen' (named by Jamie) for The Giz, swapping the front suspension and steering components to enable him to add opposite lock at will. A regular Supercar has almost no lock, thanks to its lowered stance and excessive wheel camber.
A hydraulic handbrake with a vertical lever has been fitted to the interior, while the small flat-bottomed steering wheel has been replaced with a larger circular version.
The front and rear wheel arches have also been extensively reworked – and aerodynamically tweaked, no less – to handle the extremes of the revised steering gear, there's a new rear wing in place of the stock Supercars unit, and wider 18-inch rims fitted with R-spec tyres that take the place of the category-controlled Dunlop slicks.
Otherwise, the Commodore remains just as it did when Whincup used it to win in Townsville this year. Its 5.0-litre Chevrolet Racing engine is estimated to put out over 450kW and 650Nm via a six-speed transaxle gearbox and nine-inch spool diff – and that's more than sufficient to vaporise rear tyres at will. Obviously.
The project culminated in a two-night shoot for sponsor Red Bull in the days following the recent Supercars event at Sydney Motorsport Park... and it's going to take a while for the skidmarks to fade away.
Red Bull Racing says it has no plans to send the Giz and his new toy out to chase drift comp trophies... but we'd be surprised if the pair didn't make an appearance at the World Time Attack Challenge later this month at Sydney Motorsport Park.
Take a look behind the scenes of Van Gisbergen's night drift.
First they build a Sandman Supercar, now this drift beast. What should Triple Eight and Red Bull build next?
Related articles
2015 Bentley Continental GT V8 S Concours Series Black review
9 July 2015 by Ewan Kennedy
Bentley one-make race series in the works
30 June 2015 by Paul Gover
Bentley Continental GT V8 S 2015 Review
10 March 2015 by Adam Tonkin
2015 Bentley Continental GT V8 S convertible review
1 January 2015 by Ewan Kennedy
Bentley confirms factory team for 2015 Bathurst 12-hour
4 October 2014 by Paul Gover
Comments
Get the latest news, reviews and advice every week
Related articles
2015 Bentley Continental GT V8 S Concours Series Black review
9 July 2015 by Ewan Kennedy
Bentley one-make race series in the works
30 June 2015 by Paul Gover
Bentley Continental GT V8 S 2015 Review
10 March 2015 by Adam Tonkin
2015 Bentley Continental GT V8 S convertible review
1 January 2015 by Ewan Kennedy
Bentley confirms factory team for 2015 Bathurst 12-hour
4 October 2014 by Paul Gover
Related pages
Holden Commodore
Holden
Motorsports
Related cars for sale
Search Holden cars for sale
Search Holden Commodore cars for sale
');
}