WHAT role will the respective teammates play in the Supercars Championship title fight between Brodie Kostecki and Shane van Gisbergen?
It’s one of the big talking points ahead of the season’s penultimate round on the Gold Coast, as Erebus Motorsport and Triple Eight go head-to-head.
Kostecki leads van Gisbergen by 131 points with four races and 600 points available across the Gold Coast and Adelaide street events.
Teammates Will Brown and Broc Feeney are mathematically still contenders at 390 and 408 points adrift respectively, but loom as sacrificial lambs in the heavyweight battle.
So what role will they play? And are team orders even allowed in Supercars?
Supercars’ regulations define team orders as “an instruction to a Driver or Team member, either verbal or otherwise the effect of which may interfere with a race result”.
The rule is then set out as follows.
“It is not permitted for any sponsor, supplier, entity or related entity, including an Automobile manufacturer, importer or their representative to impose or seek to impose Team orders, on any Team.”
Supercars clarified this rule in the aftermath of the 2018 Auckland SuperSprint, where Triple Eight swapped the positions of its cars on the final lap.
It made clear that the above rule allows a team to impose its own orders, but they cannot be influenced by the aforementioned third parties.
Teams and drivers cannot, of course, break any other rules in a bid to help out, such as breaching driving standards with on-track incidents.
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But teams are certainly allowed to order the repositioning of their own cars on track, or sacrifice the pit strategy of one of their drivers to benefit the other.
Erebus team boss Barry Ryan said on Friday that how they can use Brown – who coincidentally moves to Triple Eight in 2023 – to help Kostecki has not been discussed internally.
“We have not talked about that and will just do what we need to do as a team,” said Ryan of team orders.
“That is what we have done for the last two and a half years with this team and will keep doing the same thing.
“(But) if it came down to the last race of the year and that car needed that position, I am sure it will move over.”
The two squads also have the teams’ championship to think about; a battle that Erebus currently leads by 179 points.
Asked about team orders by V8 Sleuth earlier this week, Triple Eight boss Whincup made it clear where his outfit’s priority lies.
“It’s not a two-horse race, but what I will say is the drivers’ championship is the biggest trophy of the year, it’s the one we’re aiming for,” he said.
“We’ve got a great battle on our hands with Erebus, the last 20 years I think we’ve battled pretty much everyone at some stage and this year it’s Erebus for the championship.
“They’re very strong, doing a great job, and we’re going to do everything we can to win the biggest trophy of the year.
“I don’t know what that’s going to look like, I won’t sit here and say there’s going to be team orders or anything like that.
“But we’ll do everything we can to get the biggest trophy of the year. We’ll work that out on the run, what that all means.”
Triple Eight pulled rank on its drivers at the Townsville 500 mid-season, ordering a position swap that ultimately took place on the run to the chequered flag.
Perhaps ironically, that was van Gisbergen being told to let Feeney through, which the team said was so that the youngster could win the ‘round’.
Supercars Driving Standards Advisor Craig Baird told V8 Sleuth that he’ll assess any incidents that come up, but he holds no concerns about team tactics.
“I’m the ref, so everything has to be judged on its own merits,” Baird told V8 Sleuth.
“At the end of the day you’ve got two really good teams with two really good drivers, who’ll probably take the gloves off and get on with it like they have all year.
“That’s all you want to see, that’s what the crowd wants to see.”
Feeney and Brown may struggle to have much impact in Saturday’s race on the Gold Coast, having qualified just 21st and 25th respectively.
