Dunlop motorsport boss Kevin Fitzsimons suspects debris may have triggered three of five tyre failures during Race 16 of the Coates Hire Ipswich Super Sprint.
The new Dunlop Super Soft tyre made its debut at Queensland Raceway producing record lap times throughout the weekend.
However, the tyre also provided a talking point in today’s 200km race as Nick Percat (Brad Jones Racing), Garth Tander (Garry Rogers Motorsport), James Courtney (Mobil 1 HSV Racing) all suffered front left failures, while Tekno Autosports’ Will Davison was hit by two punctures.
The failures forced officials to deploy the Safety Car providing a grandstand finish to the race, which was won by Chaz Mostert.
While unsure as to the exact cause of the failures, Fitzsimons believes the problems were likely to have been caused by debris.
His team were expected to asses the track post-race to see if they could ascertain any obvious causes for the issues.
“You’d probably sit back and say probably something on the track, some debris or or the edge of a kerb. It’s just hard to pinpoint when all you get back is a pair of sidewalls,” Fitzsimons told Speedcafe.com.
“It’s not ideal and frustrating for everybody concerned, including us. But we’ll have a good solid look at it.
“We’ll have a look at the circuit and see if there’s anything fairly obvious.
“We’ve found that here previously couple years back, found something pretty significant, so whether it’s that again or not we don’t know.”
Fitzsimons believes the issues which struck Will Davison’s car were not linked to the other failures.
“There one very, very strange,” he added.
“The tyre was extremely hot when it came off of the sidewall.
“It had a lot of heat generation in there, and that’s not ideal. As to what’s caused that we just don’t know.”
Tekno Autosports’ team manager Steve Greer confirmed both the squad and driver had no warning of the impending tyre failures.
“There was no warning it was an instantaneous flat,” said Greer.
“There are a number of different possibilities like kerbs, something on the track, it could be a million and one things.
“The first we knew about it was when he went off track.”
Discussion about this post