Bathurst champion Craig Lowndes will keep racing in 2016 after his V8 Supercars team secured a lucrative sponsorship deal for his Holden.

The six-time Bathurst winner, fresh from his success with co-driver Steven Richards at Mount Panorama earlier this month, will drive a Caltex-backed Commodore next year.

The creation of the TeamVortex-branded car solves a sponsorship puzzle for the expanded Triple Eight Race Engineering stable.

New Zealand driver Shane Van Gisbergen will join Lowndes and Jamie Whincup at the powerful team next year.

But Van Gisbergen’s impending arrival created a headache with the younger Kiwi to drive a Red Bull Racing Commodore along with Whincup.

That left Triple Eight scrambling to secure a sponsor for 41-year-old Lowndes with reportedly $3.5 million in sponsorship needed to fund a third car for the 2016 campaign.

A long-time Caltex ambassador, Lowndes was hopeful the expansion will have little impact on the team’s dominance of the championship in the past 10 years.

“It’s really an extension of Triple Eight Race Engineering,” Lowndes said.

“To expand to three cars now is really exciting.”

The partnership with Caltex is for at least two years and Lowndes will retain the 888 car number he has run for over a decade.