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Craig Lowndes believes that Triple Eight Race Engineering is struggling more than it will admit to adapt to the change to linear springs in this year’s Virgin Australia Supercars Championship.
The Red Bull Holden Racing Team has just the one race win to its name from 10 to date after Shane van Gisbergen claimed victory on the Sunday at Symmons Plains, a happy hunting ground for Triple Eight.
The New Zealander is fourth in the championship at 256 points behind Shell V-Power Racing’s Scott McLaughlin, who has romped to seven wins in his new Ford Mustang, while seven-time champion Jamie Whincup languishes in ninth on the table in the other Triple Eight entry.
Whincup achieved top 10 finishes in each of the first six races of the season at Adelaide and Albert Park but was 25th on the Saturday at Symmons Plains after a qualifying setback and a hit early in Race 7 while attempting to pass Chaz Mostert which pulled the tyre bead away.
At Phillip Island last time out, he was a DNF in Race 9 after losing a wheel due to a pit stop bungle then 12th in Race 10 having lacked pace, a showing which prompted team owner Roland Dane to state that the #88 crew “needs a long hard look at itself.”
Triple Eight is now into the second year of running the ZB Commodore and Lowndes, who will pair with Whincup in the Pirtek Enduro Cup, believes that the banning of twin springs has been a major setback for the team.
“I feel the team is still really struggling to get their heads around the change to the linear spring from the dual or combination spring, it’s proven to be more of a headache than what they expected,” he wrote in his Red Bull column.
“And that’s when operational things kick in, like Jamie’s wheel coming loose after the pit stop at Phillip Island… that’s a team that prides itself on perfection, but little things like that creep in when you’re under pressure.
“The car has decent speed, and Shane showed that by winning in Tasmania, so there’s the opportunity for the team to build on that.
“But I keep coming back to the linear spring, and I suspect that’s hurt them more than they’re letting on. For so long, they’d perfected that dual spring, so this change has hurt a lot and they don’t have an answer at the moment.
“Talking to Jamie, he still wants the car to feel like it did last year, which just isn’t achievable with the way the rules are now.”
At Phillip Island, van Gisbergen’s respective qualifying laps were 1:30.6060s and 1:30.5526s, while Whincup failed to get out of Part 1 of Saturday Armor All Qualifying with a 1:31.2503s before setting a 1:30.8483s on the following day.
Last year at the same venue, van Gisbergen’s qualifying laps were 1:30.1799s and 1:30.6055s, with Whincup on the front row on the Saturday at 1:30.0523s then recording a 1:30.4956s on the Sunday.
McLaughlin, who got each of those for Armor All Pole Positions, did so with a 1:29.2292s and 1:29.5422s last month.
Those were quicker than the corresponding sessions of 2018 when the eventual champion bagged the poles with a 1:29.5057s and then a 1:29.8526s in an FGX Falcon.
In terms of race fastest laps, the Triple Eight duo generally made slight gains relative to their 2018 efforts while DJR Team Penske’s drivers found more than a second, albeit with shorter stints due to the change to a SuperSprint race format in 2019.
McLaughlin heads to another favourable venue this weekend, having won both races at Barbagallo Wanneroo Raceway in each of the past two years.
Practice 1 for the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship field at the Pirtek Perth SuperNight starts tomorrow at 1840 local time/2040 AEST.
