TRIPLE Eight was “seconds” from a triple disaster at the Repco Bathurst 1000, which would have cost Shane van Gisbergen and Richie Stanaway the race victory.
Two of the team’s three Camaros broke their gear lever mountings during the Great Race.
The mount in the #888 Craig Lowndes/Zane Goddard wildcard broke after just 17 laps, while the same part on the #88 of Broc Feeney and Jamie Whincup failed on lap 136 of 161.
Team manager Mark Dutton told V8 Sleuth post-race that the team had not alerted its Red Bull Ampol Racing drivers to Lowndes’ early failure.
“We could have been better on that,” he said. “We did think it was an isolated incident, so we didn’t, and then obviously once you’ve had two out of three, it’s not isolated.”
At the time of Feeney’s failure, van Gisbergen was battling numerous issues, later noting that brakes, steering, clutch and rubber debris were all causing concern.
Car #97 race engineer Andrew Edwards was initially reluctant to add fears over the strength of the gearshift tower to the Kiwi’s plate, but did so at Whincup’s behest.
“Initially I wasn’t going to tell him,” Edwards told the Inside Supercars Podcast.
“But Jamie’s advice was to let him know, because he could do something about it, which he was dead-right in the end.
“We let him know and he softened up the way he used the gear tower.
“That obviously helped a lot, because two out of our three cars it happened to, so there was no reason why it wasn’t going to happen to the third.
“The other ones happened pretty close to each other, lifing-wise, they’d all done similar things, so you could expect it almost to happen to the third one.
“That advice was good from Jamie and Shane did drive differently from there with the lever for the rest of the race, so that was pretty helpful.”
Edwards confirmed the mount in #97 finished the race with a crack in it.
“It looks like it was on its way to do the same thing as the others,” he said. “The way he managed it there, we were seconds from disaster again.”
Issues with the design of the mounting for the gear lever – which was not originally part of the Gen3 plan – arose earlier in the season.
It’s understood this resulted in two updates being issued and Triple Eight may have only applied the first, believing it had solved the weakness.
“The shift tower is a fabricated part with some welding,” Edwards explained.
“There’s been a couple of updates… and maybe I think we’re still on revision one of that, so there’s probably some things we need to look at there.
“What happened is just unfortunate, but now that we know more about the life of it and the failure modes, we can make it stronger.”
Although Edwards suggests each of the mounts had a similar lifespan, Dutton noted that #97 chassis “has the least milage on it, because of the car-swap.”
The Bathurst-winning car was built as the Supercheap Auto wildcard and debuted in Zane Goddard’s hands at Hidden Valley in June.
Van Gisbergen then took it over ahead of Round 7 at Sydney Motorsport Park following repeated complaints about the feel of his original machine.
Lowndes/Goddard inherited the original van Gisbergen car for Bathurst, while Feeney has remained in the same Camaro all season.
