TRIPLE Eight team manager Mark Dutton has pointed to the resolution of persistent steering issues as a gain his squad has made year-on-year.
Triple Eight, and in particular Shane van Gisbergen, were plagued by steering woes throughout the first season of Gen3.
They weren’t totally alone; an inconsistent feeling that came with the Sportech rack led to late-season testing and the development of a Tickford Racing-designed alternative.
After an uncharacteristically hit-or-miss 2023, Triple Eight has come out all guns blazing this season with Will Brown and Broc Feeney dominating the first three rounds.
“Differences from last year to this year is, we were having some mechanical issues around the steering and whatnot, causing us too much headache for what it was worth,” Dutton told V8 Sleuth.
“The steering issues for sure cost us on-track performance, and we have been working hard to improve those.
“They’re by no means fixed but we do think we have implemented some things at T8 to analyse those better and better understand them so we can not talk about it so much.
“And look, it’s one of those things where everyone is performing at a super high level, so if anyone including us has a distraction at a racetrack like that, you don’t have to drop performance a lot to then not be winning championships or win all the races that you possibly could have – referring to 2023.
“So we have been fortunate enough to be in a better position through hard work with that and it’s meaning the engineers and the drivers and the mechanics can all focus wholly and solely on car performance at the track, and that means we’re doing a pretty good job.”
Dutton noted Triple Eight continues to run the refined ‘old’ Sportech rack, while some other teams are either using a new-evolution Sportech version or the Tickford product.
Triple Eight carries a 448-point teams’ championship lead into Round 4 of the season next weekend at Wanneroo Raceway.
