T8 to trial van Gisbergen handling fix in ride session

This afternoon’s Supercars ride session in Darwin has taken on an added level of importance for Shane van Gisbergen after his Practice 2 dramas.

The three-time champion complained of handling issues for his #97 Red Bull Ampol Racing Camaro during the second Supercars session at Hidden Valley.

The Triple Eight Race Engineering crew made track rod changes during the 30-minute hit-out, but it did not cure all the ills and van Gisbergen hopped out of his car before the session was done.

“We’re working towards some things,” Team Manager Mark Dutton told Speedcafe.

“We’ve got a ride session, so the car safe to drive, so we’re good enough for rides.

“But as always, if you need to, like we do now, we’re swapping some parts out, and then we’ll see if we can identify the feeling he’s talking about.”

Car #97 looked to be left-hand down, and then van Gisbergen reported it pulling left under brakes even after the mid-session changes.

On that, Dutton said, “That can be quite a few different components that can do that.

“Could be the steering, could be the uprights, could be the brakes… Could be quite a few things, so we’re just going through a process of elimination.

“With the race meeting, you throw a whole bunch of things at it and you hope it’s fixed, and then you try to understand what it was, but you don’t have the luxury of time to try one thing – yes [or] no – then the next thing.”

Having tens of kilos of ballast in a passenger seat is not an ideal situation to detect changes, but Dutton expects van Gisbergen will be able to determine if the issue has been improved or not.

“From what he was saying, it was obvious for him to detect,” he noted.

“So, the corner weights means you aren’t going to set up… Actually, it’s on the inside here, so he might set a good lap time,” quipped Dutton, “but it definitely skews the data.

“You’re right, we could get a bum steer, but Shane’s very, very sensitive with these things so, typically, he should be able to pick it up if we’ve addressed it, fully, partly, or not at all.”

Van Gisbergen also reportedly had an issue with a hanging throttle during Practice 2.

Race Engineer Andrew Edwards said shortly afterwards, “Throttle’s not as good as it’s been but that’s a separate thing. We can probably manage that; this [handling issue] is difficult. We can’t drive around this.”

Speedcafe understands that the Chevrolets ran with a new engine map in Practice 1 which was intended to address idle and hence pit box exits, following testing between events.

However, they reverted to the old map, which was used at Symmons Plains, and hence the new calibration was not the cause of the van Gisbergen issue.

It continued a nightmare day for the New Zealander, whose Practice 1 programme was also heavily compromised, due to a glitch with a Safety Car limiter which Supercars was trialling.

Event rides start at 17:00 local time/17:30 AEST and run for 30 minutes.