SUPERCARS champion Shane van Gisbergen has hit out at the decision to rely on sensors to police track limits at this weekend’s Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500.
Van Gisbergen was among the drivers last year to criticise the “lottery” nature of the sensors.
The long-held practice of placing tyre bundles at the beach chicane apexes has been quashed this year, with an enhanced sensor system instead trusted to keep drivers in line.
That decision has been lauded by multiple stars, but van Gisbergen fears it’s a step in the wrong direction.
“I think it’s going to be the story of the weekend,” he told V8 Sleuth.
“We as drivers provided solutions last year and our opinions; I can see this just being a repeat of the last five years with the kerb sensors, they’re just random and not very accurate.
“The bundles aren’t very good, they’re probably going to break these cars, but at least they provided a reference.
“You saw when the bundles were misplaced last year (after) the Porsche race, it was just a joke. You’d kind of use the bundles as a reference.”
SVG is adamant there are better options available.
“We wanted to make the kerbs bigger or change the radius of the corner, or turn them (the sensors) off because there’s only so much kerb you can take… and they haven’t listened to the drivers,” said the three-time champion.
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Team 18’s Mark Winterbottom had already voiced discontent on the matter earlier in the week.
“I don’t like the kerb sensor system at all to be honest,” Winterbottom said.
“I think the kerbs change whether you get a kerb strike or not, whereas a bundle is literally, you hit it, you do damage to your car. I think if you make a mistake you should be punished.
“The sensors are kind of like Hawk-Eye at the tennis, no one’s really a fan of them. I get the safety reasons, but my preference is to have tyre bundles, so, if you hit it and rip the front wheel off it, that’s your problem, like, if you’re in the wall it’s game over.”
Van Gisbergen is the hunter this weekend as the title race reaches the penultimate round.
The Kiwi is 131 points behind Erebus Motorsport’s Brodie Kostecki with a maximum of 600 still up for grabs.
“I have to just go and do my best and not make mistakes, but unfortunately the gap is big enough that Brodie has to make an error or something has to go wrong and I’m not going to hope for that,” said van Gisbergen.
“He’s a friend and he’s driving very well, I don’t want to see him having something go wrong, I just have to do my best and hopefully we go to Adelaide in a fight.
“But unfortunately we have fallen too far behind from our mid-season and also the first race (when Triple Eight was disqualified).”
Repco Supercars Championship practice at Surfers Paradise starts 11:30am local time (12:30pm AEDT) tomorrow.
