SHANE van Gisbergen will seek to get his campaign for a fourth Supercars title back on track with an all-important test this week.
All four Queensland teams will head to Ipswich on Thursday (June 1), a fortnight out from Round 5 of the season in Darwin.
Van Gisbergen has slipped to 172 points off the championship lead held by Brodie Kostecki following a drop-off in qualifying form and an unfortunate opening-lap crash at Symmons Plains.
The Kiwi star has now qualified outside the top eight for five successive races, and seven of the past eight.
“We need the test probably more than ever,” van Gisbergen said at the launch of Triple Eight’s wildcard Camaro on Saturday night.
“Like at a race weekend it’s pretty hard to go outside your circle with set-up and get too adventurous.
“We don’t need to find that much but we really want to try some things and we’ll look at different avenues of set-up that we probably don’t have the time to do at a race weekend, so it’s very important.”
The newly built wildcard car for Craig Lowndes and Zane Goddard will make its on-track debut at Queensland Raceway ahead of a solo cameo for the latter at Hidden Valley, and van Gisbergen has declared he’s an open book for the duo.
MORE: Lowndes bracing for career-first
Van Gisbergen added his support for Goddard, whose only Supercars race in the past 17 months ended with a controversial crash in last year’s Bathurst 1000.
“For Zane it’s a bit of redemption,” said van Gisbergen.
“He got unfairly smashed in my opinion for what happened last year… this year he gets mentoring by Craig and an opportunity in a great car to have a go at the race.”
Tickford Racing, Walkinshaw Andretti United and Brad Jones Racing will also test this week, on Wednesday at Winton.
A rookie test will further be completed by Tickford (Thomas Randle and Declan Fraser) and Grove Racing (Matt Payne).