TRIPLE Eight Race Engineering will not move Shane van Gisbergen back into his original Gen3 chassis for The Bend after being unsatisfied with a comparison test.
Van Gisbergen had been visibly frustrated with the handling of his #97 Red Bull Ampol Camaro at the Darwin Triple Crown and Townsville 500, leading to a car swap ahead of the Sydney SuperNight.
The three-time champion shifted into the newer wildcard car raced by Zane Goddard in Darwin and instantly appeared happier.
In fact, van Gisbergen was the pacesetter for almost the entire weekend at Sydney Motorsport Park, including topping both practice sessions and winning the Sunday race from pole position.
Triple Eight was confident it had found the issue with 888A-060 (which he drove at the opening six rounds of the season) and that any problems were unrelated to a Symmons Plains crash in May.
However, a post-event ride day at SMP has left lingering question marks, sparking the team to avoid moving SVG back into 888A-060.
Triple Eight team principal and seven-time champion Jamie Whincup sampled all three of its Chevrolets – also including Broc Feeney’s – after which it was determined that further investigation is necessary.
“Following Shane’s chassis change for the Sydney SuperNight, the team had a ride day on the Monday following the event which presented an ideal opportunity for all our drivers to test the handling of each of our three cars,” team manager Mark Dutton reported.
“Jamie (Whincup) cycled through all three chassis and identified that the steering felt different in all three cars.
“We now have our crew working hard to better understand the origins of these differences so we can better rectify them.
“The variance between all three cars from a ‘driver feel’ perspective is too great.
“We will continue with the same chassis that we ran with at Sydney, as we believe this is the best decision for the team’s workload, as completing car swaps takes a lot of time and that time is better spent continuing to identify the root cause of these differences.”
Round 8 of the 2023 Repco Supercars Championship takes place at The Bend Motorsport Park on August 18-20.
Triple Eight will be back to running three main game cars at the Sandown 500 next month, meaning the window is closing fast to fix its troublesome chassis.
