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Shane van Gisbergen will remain in the wildcard chassis as Triple Eight Race Engineering investigates a handling discrepancy in its three active Gen3 chassis.
In Sydney, van Gisbergen switched to the car which Zane Goddard drove as the Supercheap Auto entry at Hidden Valley, after handling imbalances for the three-time Supercars champion both there and at the Townsville event which followed.
Triple Eight thought it had determined the root cause of the problem but will now spend more time investigating after it was found at a ride day that all three of its Camaros handle differently.
Red Bull Ampol Racing Team Manager Mark Dutton said, via communication from the team today, “Following Shane’s chassis change for the Sydney SuperNight, the team had a ride day on the Monday following the event which presented an ideal opportunity for all our drivers to test the handling of each of our three cars.
“Jamie [Whincup] cycled through all three chassis and identified that the steering felt different in all three cars.
“We now have our crew working hard to better understand the origins of these differences so we can better rectify them.
“The variance between all three cars from a ‘driver feel’ perspective is too great.
“We will continue with the same chassis that we ran with at Sydney, as we believe this is the best decision for the team’s workload, as completing car swaps takes a lot of time and that time is better spent continuing to identify the root cause of these differences.”
Van Gisbergen had competed in chassis 888A-060 for the first six events of the season, but came to experience a mystery handling imbalance at the latter two of those.
Despite Triple Eight’s attempts to cure the ills in its post-Darwin set-down, they reappeared at Townsville, and hence the swap to 888A-063 for the Sydney SuperNight.
There, the New Zealander missed out on a podium on the Saturday night due to a penalty but scored victory in Sunday’s Race 19, breaking an 11-race winless streak.
Notably, van Gisbergen had incurred crash damage at the Symmons Plains event which immediately preceded that of Hidden Valley, although Dutton suggested that was mere coincidence.
Needless to say, Triple Eight will be hoping for a resolution before the Sandown 500, which takes on September 15-17, given Goddard and Craig Lowndes will be competing in the Supercheap Auto wildcard entry at that event.
They are also set to test in early-September at Queensland Raceway as preparation for the enduros.
