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Shane van Gisbergen won the Repco Bathurst 1000 with the same gear lever riser issue which developed into failures for the other Triple Eight Race Engineering cars.
The Red Bull Ampol Racing Camaros looked on for a one-two in the Great Race until Broc Feeney’s gear lever mount broke with 25 laps to go.
That was the third such failure for a Triple Eight entry during the day, with the Supercheap Auto wildcard having already broken two of them.
Van Gisbergen’s Race Engineer, Andrew Edwards, has now revealed that Car #97 escaped with a cracked riser.
Speedcafe has heard suggestions that the riser failed on the last of 161 laps and while that much was not confirmed, Edwards did admit on the Inside Supercars podcast that they were “seconds from disaster,” which they escaped thanks to careful management from the Kiwi.
He told the Inside Supercars podcast, “Initially, I wasn’t going to tell him but Jamie’s [Whincup, Team Principal] advice was, let him know because he could do something about it, which he was dead right in the end.
“So, we let him know and he just softened up the way he used the gear tower which obviously helped a lot.
“Because, two out of our three cars it happened to, [so] there’s no reason why it wasn’t going to happen to the third, because the other ones happened pretty close to each other so, lifing wise, they’ve all done similar things.
“So, you can expect it almost to happen to the third one, so that advice was good from Jamie, and Shane did drive differently from there with the lever for the rest of the race.”
On whether van Gisbergen’s mount cracked, Edwards confirmed, “That’s correct.
“It looks like it was on its way to do the same thing as the others, so I think the way he managed it there… we were seconds from disaster again.”
Gear lever mounts have been in the spotlight at various times this season, with multiple revisions to the spec.
Speedcafe understands that the enhanced leg protection left room for fewer mounting points (four instead of six) and hence more load through each point.
Drivers were cracking the risers when the first season of Gen3 began in Newcastle, and each of PremiAir Racing’s Tim Slade and Tickford Racing’s Thomas Randle broke one completely at Wanneroo.
It subsequently became understood that PremiAir had not in fact installed the first revision of the spec at that point but a further beefed-up version came in time for the following event at Symmons Plains anyway, although Andrew Edwards indicated that Triple Eight’s cars were not on that spec at Bathurst.
“I think there’s been a couple of updates since Tim’s failure and maybe I think we’re still on revision one of that, so there’s probably some things we need to look at there,” said Edwards.
“But, we’ll review that when we get home; what the issue is and how to make it more bulletproof.
“What happened [at Bathurst] is just unfortunate but, now we know more about the life of it and the failure modes, we can go and make it stronger.”
