There’s one final 200km race tomorrow and 150 points on offer, but after three of the four dashes at the ITM 500 Auckland Race 12 winner Shane van Gisbergen leads the hunt for the Jason Richards Memorial Trophy.

The Team TEKNO VIP Petfoods driver took his first win at Pukekohe Park Raceway today, and is hoping to clinch the prize, named in honour of former V8 Supercars driver, the late Jason Richards.

Richards was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer in 2010 and ultimately lost his brave battle.

Now, one of his countrymen is in pole position for the prize. Van Gisbergen won the day’s second race and would be honoured to hold up the JR Trophy tomorrow.

“One of us Kiwis has to win it – to keep that in New Zealand would be great,” van Gisbergen told v8supercars.com.au.

“Jason was such a big influence for me when I first started racing in V8s and always been a fan of his, so it would be awesome to grab that.”

The quick Kiwi isn’t getting ahead of himself though, with the number of points on offer tomorrow, and a similar scenario leading the Rolex Australian Grand Prix seeing him miss out on the final honour after three of the four race wins.

“Unfortunately those three races are worth (combined) what tomorrow’s race is worth. That caught us out at the Grand Prix.

“We just need to put it together. We’ve got a bit of a lead, but we’ll see how it goes. Mark (Winterbottom) was super fast today, but we’ve been going awesome, it’s great.”

Van Gisbergen was deducted 25 Championship points for a clash with Jason Bright in Race 11, but while the deduction affects his overall position, it does not change the Meeting points in this case.

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