Paul Morris says his team will be unfairly disadvantaged by the tyre rule change that V8 Supercars has made for today’s Race 15 of the V8 Supercars Championship at the Sucrogen Townsville 400.
After taking advantage of a loophole in the sporting regulations in yesterday’s 200km race at Townsville by placing just one hard tyre on Steve Owen’s VIP Petfoods Falcon, V8 Supercars has amended the rules, disallowing the ‘mixing’ of tyre compounds.
CLICK HERE for Speedcafe.com’s breaking story regarding the rule change.
Morris claims that he planned Owen’s weekend around the original rules and is now being disadvantaged by the change.
Each car was allocated 20 soft and eight hard tyres for the weekend, with Owen’s Race 14 strategy seeing him use 11 of the faster tyres.
“I’ve entered the race meeting with the way the rule has been written and now it has been changed,” Morris told Speedcafe.com.
“I’ve used our car’s tyres in a certain way. I can’t do that now – I have a completely different tyre bank now. Are they going to re-issue us with new tyres? I’m disadvantaged.
“They should leave it as they stands or issue everyone new tyres.”
The loophole Morris detected almost brought Owen a podium result. Only a broken rear left shock absorber in the final stint cost Owen a better finishing place than his eventual sixth.
“He definitely had the pace of some pretty fast drivers and cars, but unfortunately, in the last stint he had a problem with the shock. He was struggling to get it off the turn,” Morris said.
Morris says that he had noticed the regulation loophole earlier in the year, but waited to use it to his advantage when Owen was in a winning position.
“I noticed it before Darwin, but I didn’t tell anyone about it until after qualifying,” Morris told Speedcafe.com.
“I knew about it, and I was waiting for us to be at the front to take the punt on it.
“I’m sure all the boffins will be wishing they would have taken advantage of it. Sometimes, you can’t see the wood through the trees …”
Steve Owen told Speedcafe.com after yesterday’s race that he was surprised with the speed on his car on the unique combination of rubber.
“Surprisingly it was good. We were competitive with the three softs and one hard,” he said.
“It was just the last stint where we put on a good set of tyres but we had a problem with the car. We had good car speed. I reckon we were on for half of a result.”
Race 15 of the 2012 V8 Supercars Championship will kick-off at 1235, preceded by a 20 minute qualifying session at 1535.
See below for Speedcafe.com’s Sucrogen Townsville 400 Race Guide
See below for Speedcafe.com’s Race Guide for the British Grand Prix, which is also taking place this weekend
