The title battle between Triple Eight’s Broc Feeney and Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Chaz Mostert was tipped on its head on the opening lap of the 250km contest.
Feeney was spun by Mostert’s WAU teammate Ryan Wood at Turn 6 in a move that dropped the Red Bull star to the back of the pack.
Motorsport Australia officials ran their regular judicial process and awarded Wood a 15-second penalty, while Triple Eight did not try to take the matter further post-race.
While Feeney’s attempted fightback ultimately came undone due to engine trouble that would have struck anyway, much post-race discussion centred on the Wood manoeuvre.
“Unfortunately, it brought a bit of an anti-climax to the day and didn’t give the championship contenders the proper fight that was coming,” Dutton told Speedcafe of the incident.
“I don’t think that did justice to the championship to have a non-contender do a cheap shot. It was an interesting day, and the hype died down a little bit, which was bad for the sport.
“Everything was going in the right direction, it was looking like being an amazing race and an amazing finish and to have the professional foul take that away, I think that needs some review.”
Although unwilling to say too much in the immediate aftermath of the defeat, Dutton affirmed he was referring to the application of penalties rather than the Finals system itself.
Officials warned drivers at Sandown that any serious misconduct in the Finals Series could result in harsh penalties including a fine of up to $444,000.
Such punishments in addition to regular race penalties could likely only be enacted if there was clear sign of intent behind any incident.
Triple Eight has meanwhile been left to perform its own post-mortem following the engine issue that ultimately denied Feeney a shot at the title.
Sunday featured a repeat of an issue experienced the previous day, which was blamed on the engine’s crank angle sensor that Dutton said was a known problem ahead of the weekend.
“We changed stuff pre-emptively at the start of the weekend and obviously that was an issue in Saturday’s race, but to a lesser extent,” said Dutton.
“We changed the sensor to the one that had done all the running previously without fault and looked at some other options.
“Craig Hasted from Supercars was helpful. Because we don’t have access to the ECU the way you normally would because everything is locked down, he came to look as well.
“We put a fair bit of time and effort into that as you’d imagine and alas it wasn’t fixed and unfortunately was much worse than [Saturday] as well.”
Dutton said the engine had run without fault throughout Sunday’s qualifying and the Top 10 Shootout, where Feeney scored a record-setting 18th pole of the season.
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