The TEKNO Autosports team is confident in a change of fortunes at this weekend’s SKYCITY Triple Crown Darwin, after challenging runs in Perth and Winton.

While the two grassroots circuits have traditionally been ill-suited to van Gisbergen, he has put in strong performances in Darwin in previous years and enters the event with a new chassis, nicknamed ‘Lola’ and a focus on pushing further towards the front.

“We normally go all right at Darwin, I like the track and the people are really nice – the event is good,” van Gisbergen told v8supercars.com.au ahead of the SKYCITY Triple Crown, during which he and the team welcome new sponsor K&N filters for the remainder of the season.

“Whatever happens, we’ll see,” the typically relaxed 26 year old said.

“But the car’s been good there the last few years so [there’s] no reason why it won’t be any good [this time].”

Team boss Steve Hallam echoed van Gisbergen’s sentiments and said there was no point focusing on previous events that didn’t garner the points they would have liked.

“Winton is in the past so [we’re] just concentrating on things we can affect – we’ll take the new car to Darwin, and looking forward to it,” he said.

Van Gisbergen sits seventh in the Championship standings, but is closer to the leaders than this time last year.

Having ended last year runners-up to Jamie Whincup in the title race, the TEKNO team is confident the Darrell Lea STIX Commodore can feature at the front and go that step further in what is van Gisbergen’s last year with the team.

While he shifts to Triple Eight Race Engineering for 2016, his focus in 100 per cent on winning the title with his current group, and engineer Dr Geoff Slater believes that is achievable.

“We all feel like we’re in a better position [than last year],” Slater told v8supercars.com.au.

“We have a greater understanding of the car, and Shane’s driving as well as ever. Unfortunately, we’ve had some poor circumstances in recent rounds that have prevented closing that gap but the pace has been there.

“We at Tekno are working harder than ever to maximise the remaining rounds to finish up the front, where we deserve to be.”

Slater warned in his engineering preview drivers would need to take care on the opening laps of each race, as early incidents are common at the 2.9km circuit.

“The tight nature of the track at the race start has seen many incidents occur quite early in the race, so surviving the opening laps will be paramount,” he explained.

The V8 Supercars kick off at Hidden Valley tomorrow – stay tuned to FOX SPORTS 506 from 9am EST for live coverage.

SVG confident he will bounce back in Darwin