Van Gisbergen looking to learn from 2017 mistakes

The 2016 series champion made a perfect start to his title defence last year, winning both races in Adelaide to set up what looked to be another title-challenging season.

However, it didn't quite pan out that way. After technically winning the crash-affected first race in Tasmania, for which no points were awarded, the Kiwi had to wait until the Winton round midway through the season for his next legitimate win.

There was an even longer wait until win number four, van Gisbergen triumphing on home soil in New Zealand to help seal fourth in the points head of Tickford's Chaz Mostert.

While hardly a disaster of a season, van Gisbergen admits that he 'could have done better', and says he's analysed mistakes made along the way heading into 2018.

"We still won a lot of races, so I don't look back at 2017 as being a bad year, but we could have done better," he told the Red Bull website.

"When you're pushing the limits and trying a lot of things… that was probably our undoing as a driver and an engineer, that we pushed so hard that we found the limit too many times.

"I'm not someone who hangs onto seasons good or bad after they've finished, but I always make sure I learn from it and turn up next time making sure I don't make the same mistake twice.

"To do that you have to look at your mistakes and analyse them.

"You need to be hard on yourself, there's no way you can improve if you aren't.

"Last year, we had a fair bit to take out of it that we needed to improve on. So it was a good year, but we had a lot of negatives as well."

Van Gisbergen also paid tribute to his Triple Eight squad for its build of the brand new ZB Commodore, which will debut on the streets of Adelaide this weekend.

"The cars, they just look beautiful in the new style and shape with all of the new parts, and the guys have done an amazing job," he said.

"We had our shakedown at [Queensland Raceway], and these absolutely perfect-looking cars were lined up there in the pit lane waiting for Jamie [Whincup], Craig [Lowndes] and myself … you know how much work went into them even being there for that day, and it's a pretty cool feeling being trusted to take them out for those first laps.

"We always talk about the next thing, but times like that you have to take a second to really appreciate those moments."