TRIPLE Eight has had to swallow some engineering pride as it prepares to fight Erebus Motorsport for the Supercars title over the final two rounds.
The powerhouse team has reacted to the gearshift tower failures suffered by two of its cars in the recent Repco Bathurst 1000 by adopting a fix designed earlier this year by arch rival Erebus.
Triple Eight’s Broc Feeney/Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes/Zane Goddard entries were both struck down at Bathurst.
The winning Shane van Gisbergen/Richie Stanaway car was also said by engineer Andrew Edwards to be “seconds from disaster”, showing signs of the same problem.
It became apparent after Bathurst that there had been multiple revisions of the part during the early stages of the season.
“We went there with one objective, to win the race, we achieved that,” Triple Eight managing director Whincup told V8 Sleuth of the team’s post-Bathurst debrief.
“But to have two cars basically DNF and be very, very close to a complete disaster was an eye-opener, it was quite alarming for all of us and we’ve since gone over the car with a fine-tooth comb.
“We didn’t think we were that exposed to something like that.
“We started the year with revision A, we saw a failure in another team and then we went and designed revision B. We’ve had no problems with revision B up until Bathurst.
“A revision C was designed by another team which is out there, teams have the choice to run revision B or C.
“We’ve moved now with the Bathurst knowledge to revision C and our plan is to do a revision D between now and the end of the year to start 2024.”
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The Erebus version, dubbed ‘revision C’ by Whincup, features extra gussets that add strength, but also weight, as described by Brad Jones in the below video.
Triple Eight designed the bulk of the Gen3 platform for Supercars and is also the Chevrolet homologation team.
The Red Bull-backed squad’s sweet and sour Bathurst has shaped the title fight ahead of the penultimate round on the Gold Coast.
Erebus’ Bathurst runner-up Brodie Kostecki leads van Gisbergen by 131 points, while their teammates Will Brown and Feeney are 390 and 408 points adrift respectively.
Triple Eight meanwhile trails Erebus by 179 points in the teams’ championship battle.
