Supercars champion Mark Winterbottom has emerged as a rare supporter of tyre bundles after a decision to remove them for this weekend’s Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500.
There will no longer be any tyre bundles at the Beach Chicane while one will be left inside of Turn 1 at the front chicane, but in its revised position slightly further from the track than where it began last year’s event.
Sensors to detect kerb-cutting will remain in place and, in an enhancement for 2023, such ‘hops’ incurred during practice and qualifying will immediately be shown on a driver’s dashboard display.
It is understood that the changes, which do not affect the Surfers Paradise Street Circuit’s track licence, were made over concerns of the durability of the front bars on the new-for-2023 Gen3 race cars.
However, they also follow a fiery, 11-car pile-up which occurred in last year’s Gold Coast 500, triggered when James Golding got loose through the Beach Chicane and thumped a tyre bundle out of place.
Winterbottom, though, thinks that drivers should suffer if they cannot avoid them.
“I don’t like the kerb sensor system at all, to be honest,” said the Team 18 pilot.
“I think the kerbs change whether you get a kerb strike or not, whereas a bundle is literally, you hit it, you do damage to your car.
“I think if you make a mistake, you should be punished.
“The sensors are kind of like Hawk-Eye at the tennis; no one’s really a fan of them.
“I get the safety reasons, but my preference is to have tyre bundles, so, if you hit it and rip the front wheel off it, that’s your problem; like, if you’re in the wall, it’s game over.
“But it is what it is and we’ll go as hard as we always do to get a result.”
On the other hand, Triple Right Race Engineering’s Broc Feeney, who was among those to suffer race-ending damage in the aforementioned Golding incident, backed the move.
“We all talked about it last year,” he said.
“We had meetings in the drivers’ briefing last year about trying to remove them and at the time we couldn’t because we were sort of already committed to the weekend, but I think that’s what all drivers wanted, to be honest.
“I think it does quite a lot of damage to the cars and you sort of have to hit them to go fast, so I think it’s a good thing.
“We’re going to find out, see what the sensors are like, but it’s probably going to be less carnage and we look forward to that.”
Dick Johnson Racing’s Anton De Pasquale agreed, but cautioned that there is still plenty of scope for carnage on the Gold Coast.
“It opens it up a little because the tyre bundles, obviously, last year caused a massive accident so that should free that up,” he said.
“But there’s sensors and there’s still regulations and everything for that, so it won’t change too much, I think.
“Obviously there’ll still be a lot of repairs going on,” added De Pasquale.
“The Gold Coast produces some crazy racing, a lot of accidents… There’s a lot of things to hit around the Gold Coast.”
Golding himself also thinks the removal of tyre bundles is a positive call.
“I think they’ve made the change more for the cars,” noted the PremiAir Racing driver.
“These cars are probably a little bit more fragile at the front so clipping the tyre bundles and that sort of thing like we always used to wouldn’t really work and there’d be a lot of debris and that sort of stuff on the race track that would slow the race up.
“So, it’s a change they’ve had to make and try to improve every race we go to – they’re always looking at things to make it safer and just make the racing better – so I think it’s the right direction and hopefully it puts on a good show for everyone.”
As Winterbottom alluded to, the kerb sensors have also been a source of regular controversy, including last year, when drivers claimed they were ‘randomly’ pinging during Friday practice.
Notably, the 2013 Bathurst 1000 winner was also around in 2011 – unlike Feeney, De Pasquale, and Golding – when Supercars attempted to do without tyre bundles and instead used bollards as a visual reference for drivers.
The bollards were quickly destroyed and the sensors were turned off midway through the Sunday race after seeming to malfunction, leading to a farcical situation whereby those who were not be tracked by television cameras were able to take significant liberties with kerb hopping.
Winterbottom shared victory with Richard Lyons in that race while then-Tickford Racing team-mate Will Davison set a lap record which stands to this day, a dozen years on.
Practice 1 starts this Friday at 11:30 local time/12:30 AEDT.
