Brown escaped sanction for an alleged breach of the pit limiter rules following a series of successful arguments from Triple Eight team boss Mark Dutton.
However, should Brown have been found guilty of flicking his pit lane speed limiter off marginally before the pit exit line, he would have been disqualified from the race result.
That was due to the relevant rule requiring the limiter to be active whenever the car is moving in pit lane sitting in Division C of the Supercars Operations Manual.
The recommended penalty for any breach of Division C, which covers technical rules, is disqualification.
Supercars motorsport boss Tim Edwards said the location of the rule within the rulebook was assessed as part of the post-Taupo debrief with Motorsport Australia.
The rule has now been moved to Division D (covering sporting rules), where it sits alongside those governing pit lane speed, a breach of which carries a drive-through penalty.
An update has been incorporated into the supplementary regulations ahead of next weekend’s Perth Super440 at Wanneroo.
“This is no reflection on what happened with T8, but sometimes it takes an issue coming up to think, ‘well is that right?’,” Edwards told Speedcafe.
“We thought about it and felt the driver releasing the [pit lane speed limiter] button is not really a technical breach, it’s a sporting breach.
“Exclusion seems over the top because the net result is the same as speeding in the pit lane, so they needed to sit in the same part of the rulebook.
“This is about us showing some compassion and trying to do the right thing by the competitors.”
Although the penalties table provided by Supercars to Motorsport Australia only carries a ‘recommended’ tag, it’s rare for the recommended penalty not to be applied when a breach is established.
Brown’s Taupo escape had also triggered Supercars to install a timing line at pit exit at Symmons Plains to help the category monitor limiter use and speed when leaving the lane.
Supercars has long had such a loop at pit entry but relied on a judge of fact, and its ability to call-up data and vision, to police the exit.
While the intention is to install pit exit loops at all circuits, they currently do not hold regulatory value and are instead being used for information gathering purposes.
“You’ve got a driver sitting in a car kind of guessing where the line is in terms of accelerating, so the first step is for them to understand how close they all are,” Edwards explained.
“The reality is our judge of fact stands there and kind of gets a good read on when they’ve clicked the button, so it wouldn’t be right for us to implement something and say it’s hard and fast.
“I had a lot of drivers speak to me in Tassie and say they feel like they’re hitting the button at the right point to accelerate, but they weren’t quite sure.
“Everybody knows where the two lines are at the pit entry, they’ve been there for years, all the drivers have gotten used to it.
“But where exactly do you put them at pit exit? Are you measuring them before the line or are you going to put that second loop after the line?
“It’s a new tool for us. It probably will become hard and fast [at some point] but we want to make sure we’ve got it 100 percent right and we want the teams to learn from it.”
Edwards added that Supercars’ post-event analysis revealed drivers were “all within 1km/h” across the loop in Tassie, indicating they quickly mastered the change.
Discussion about this post