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An ability think on the run is set to be key to success in today’s Penrite Oil Sandown 500, based on comments by Red Bull Ampol Racing’s Mark Dutton.
The unknowns which the first enduro race of the Gen3 Supercars era represents will provide a stern test to not only drivers but also the engineers and strategists who have to think out when to pit and what to do in each stop.
Asked if Triple Eight Race Engineering has a strategy or will operate on the run, Dutton, its Team Manager, told Speedcafe, “A bit of both.
“You always have to have a strategy, or multiple strategies, but then tactics come into play where you have to react to what other people are doing because, clearly, that affects the outcome.
“You can’t control everything; [for example] Safety Cars come at usually the wrong time, so you’ve got to know, at all times, what you’ll do in each scenario.
“We’ve run through quite a lot of scenarios because there’s a very large difference with these cars and what we’ve run previously, and that’s the tank size and hence how far you can run in a stint.
“But then also the refill time being longer, not only because of the larger tank but because of the fuel flow rate, that is really different to what we’ve done in the last 20 years of running Supercars, so that’ll be interesting.”
Fuel range is definitely longer than before, although precise distance can only be estimated at this point, and will vary from driver to driver.
It may well be a moot point until the run home given the predictions of high tyre wear, and how long the super soft rubber will last on Sandown’s ageing surface is an even greater unknown than fuel.
There are no compulsory pit stops, not even for a brake pad change (unlike at Bathurst), but teams up and down pit lane have practiced them, with varying levels of success.
A two-stopper may well be feasible but, with 133-litre cells and a refuelling rate of 2.2 to 2.3 litres per second, a fill from empty to full will take around a minute.
With transit time on top, anyone who pits from behind the leader would go a lap down if they completely fill the tank, leaving them in a vulnerable position.
Furthermore, they would have a massive amount of fuel, in a cell which sits relatively high in a car bereft of cabin anti-roll bar adjusters, to manage.
Then, once the brains of pit lane figure all of that out, including a best guess at what their rivals are planning, a Safety Car could upend everything at any time.
Fortunately for Triple Eight, pit stop practice is said to have gone “really smoothly,” but qualifying did not go so smoothly for two of the team’s cars.
Broc Feeney was disappointed with fifth in the Top 10 Shootout but Shane van Gisbergen did not even make it that far.
He put the #97 Camaro 19th on the grid after twice breaching track limits in qualifying and then running off on the latter of those laps, while Zane Goddard was 23rd in the #888 Supercheap Auto wildcard entry of which Craig Lowndes is the official primary driver.
The last time the Sandown 500 was held, though, in 2019, van Gisbergen/Garth Tander would have won from second-last on the grid if not for a late mechanical failure.
“Clearly, we’re in a better starting position with Broc and Jamie [Whincup] than we are with Shane and Richie [Stanaway], but we’ve seen Shane come from much further back than that,” noted Dutton.
The Warm Up starts at 10:10 local time/AEST.
Additional reporting: Mark Fogarty
