Triple Eight boss Roland Dane has led a call for Supercars to further clarify the rules regarding time certain finishes following confusion at the Tyrepower Tasmania Super Sprint.
Saturday’s Race 3 at Symmons Plains was declared a result despite only four laps being completed after officials suspended the encounter for 50 minutes, following a 12-car crash on lap 2 of 50.
A decision was made to restart the race under Safety Car shortly before its time certain finish, with Triple Eight’s Shane van Gisbergen leading Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes to the chequered flag.
This procedure had satisfied the Supercars sporting regulations with championship points initially awarded.
Following a post-race review by CAMS stewards and Supercars, a decision was made not to issue points while the race result stood.
Under the current sporting regulations (D15.4.5), “If a race is stopped before 50 percent of the scheduled race distance/duration has been completed by the leading Car and cannot be restarted, no points will be awarded.”
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However, yesterday’s race was restarted which superseded the rule.
Reflecting on the decisions made Dane believes lessons should be learned for the future if a similar situation arises.
He feels further clarity on rules regarding time certain finishes and the declaration of points is required, while suggesting Race 3 should have been re-run today.
“We need to write a rule around time certainty and we need to rewrite the rule around the points,” Dane told Speedcafe.com.
“They are both things that we can do quickly in consultation with stakeholders and we can do it quickly and deal with it.
“It is a difficult situation as clearly we are trying to give a race to the people on the hill and everyone did their best.
“Really the lessons to be learned from this are, we probably should have tried less hard to put on a race and just restarted the race on Sunday using the discretionary power of the stewards.
“We also should have a very clear situation where if a race runs, but it only runs less than 50 percent of its distance, whatever the time is, then half points should be awarded. That would have taken the sting out of the whole thing.
“At some point our rule book has been tweaked there to have zero points, but in a confusing way, or a hundred percent of the points.
“I don’t know when it was changed, we will have to find out.
“Clearly there are some lessons to be learnt from this, and trying to balance between giving the fans here a show and realising that it was unrealistic to do anything.”
Mobil 1 HSV Racing boss Adrian Burgess agrees that the procedure should be reviewed, but felt the decision not to issue points was correct.
“Every race is reviewed in team-land but equally through CAMS and Supercars, they have their own reviews even when weekends go smoothly,” Burgess told Speedcafe.com.
“Clearly there will be a lot of things that we will learn and take away from this weekend.
“But it is nearly impossible to write a rule book that covers every eventuality, although I am sure and I hope that there will be things we learn from this one.”
The Supercars field will return to action with a qualifying session at 1130 prior to an 84 lap race.
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