Though fearing a suspension problem with the #333 Tilton Racing Hyundai could cause him to crash and lacking the speed of earlier in the week, Shiels still managed to climb from 16^th to eighth in Saturday's 16-lap race.

That two of those laps were run under yellow flag conditions made his effort even better.

"The car, it's got something broken in the car. We had heaps of contact yesterday ... so we've obviously got something wrong since that first lap yesterday," Shiels said.

"It was affecting the handling really bad over the top, the front right suspension I think has got some damage to it and for all the corners over the top, that's a loaded wheel. It was like banging and making a real bad noise, we'd run wide and I thought something was going to break and put me in the wall.

"It wasn't ideal, it wasn't handling well and I ran out of brakes too."

Saturday's race was part of a frustrating run of bad luck Shiels and his team endured at Bathurst. His brilliant fourth place in race one was stripped after a miscommunication led to a technical breach, then on Friday afternoon damage caused by rivals saw him go from the lead to position 11.

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It meant Shiels started the final race of his maiden TCR season from 16^th on the grid, positions being determined by combined points from earlier in the Bathurst round.

He made a brilliant start, improving four spots by the time he headed up Mountain Straight for the first time, and rising one more into 11^th by the end of the lap.

Shiels cracked the 10 on lap three, but his charge was halted by a yellow flag after Nathan Morcom clipped the wall on his run through The Esses. At that point the Bathurst driver was the biggest improver in the field.

The safety car pulled off track at the end of lap six, and the field continued to shuffle. Shiels managed to climb to ninth, but then slipped back to 12^th as the performance of his brakes dropped off.

"I went into The Chase and braked in my normal spot, but it just wouldn't pull up," he said.

However, the determined driver continued to press. With a lap to go Shiels was ninth, the #333 making up one more spot in the final 6.213 kilometres to cross the line in eighth.

"Yeah 100 percent I can still see the positives [from the week]. Quali was really good, in race one we came fourth and were so close to a podium in that one and in race two we were leading the race," he said.

"We definitely learned a lot this year, I'd like to start the season again with the car we've got now. We know a lot more now than we did at the start of the year."

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