Lucas Oil's Shane van Gisbergen has narrowly missed out on his fifth win of the season in a dramatic safety car-affected race on Sunday in Darwin.

Van Gisbergen, who is swiftly closing in on fifth in the drivers' standings on 1111 points, started from seventh on the grid on Sunday – and was the fastest man on the track in the closing stages, hunting down leader Mark Winterbottom.

The popular New Zealander, who stopped three times in Sunday's 200km feature race, once under the safety car, came into contention during the last 10 laps, and passed Red Bull Racing Australia's Jamie Whincup for second place.

The final laps featured a dramatic cat and mouse battle between Van Gisbergen and Winterbottom, as the TEKNO Autosports' driver pushed hard for the lead. He finished the race just half a second adrift at the flag.

The Lucas Oil-powered driver, who has been a contender all season in his V.I.P Petfoods Commodore, showed strong form all weekend long with a third and seventh from Saturday's twin 100km races.

The next outing for the Lucas Oil V.I.P Petfoods team will be the Townsville 500, held in just over a weeks' time on July 4-6.

Shane van Gisbergen, #97 VIP Petfoods/Lucas Oil Holden VF Commodore:

"I had a couple of quick laps and thought 'wow, this is going to be good.

"But I had a couple of big slides for two corners in a row, and it's pretty hard then to recover from that, as the tyres were just gone.

"I was second last at one point in that race so I wasn't expecting to finish second. If I had another five laps I would have cruised up to him a bit slower.

"It was a pretty big recovery and a good comeback."