T8 to troubleshoot van Gisbergen handling drama

Red Bull Ampol Racing will use this week’s set-down to isolate the mysterious handling issue which plagued Shane van Gisbergen’s Camaro at the Darwin Supercars event.

The three-time champion reported his car pulling left under brakes during Practice 2, with a mid-session change to the track rods unable to cure its ills.

The Triple Eight Race Engineering crew then swapped over a host of parts, but something was still amiss in the #97 Chevrolet Camaro during qualifying and racing.

Van Gisbergen would go on to qualifying fourth, third, and then ninth, which he converted into race results of sixth (including a stack stop), second, and fourth, respectively.

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While the New Zealander has not been his usual swashbuckling self on the track, Team Principal Jamie Whincup pointed to an ongoing anomaly with his car.

“It’s probably more car than himself personally,” Whincup told Speedcafe.

“Something wasn’t quite right for him this weekend, which never corrected itself all weekend, so there’ll be something there, no doubt.

“When we go back, we do what we call set-down, so we set the car down and see what’s going on.

“I’ve got no doubt we’ll find something that will be the cause of the issue and then we’ll go again.

“He has forgotten how to drive overnight – that’s ridiculous – so we’ll get there.

“But, I wish it hadn’t happened because he wasn’t happy all weekend and we’ve just got to find out what the issue is.”

Van Gisbergen in fact suffered a triple whammy of technical problems during practice at Hidden Valley.

Many, but apparently not all, Camaro drivers found a new engine map to be less than satisfactory and the previous calibration was reverted to from Practice 2.

Van Gisbergen, though, lost the majority of Practice 1 to a glitch in Supercars’ experimental Safety Car limiter which restricted Car #97 to 120km/h.

“We’re disappointed with ourselves,” said Whincup on the map.

“You can’t get it right all the time. We strive bloody hard to keep improving.

“Our plan was good, we did our due diligence, we went down, worked with other teams… We worked with BJR, we asked Erebus if they wanted to help out but they elected not to.

“So, we did our due diligence, but we just tripped up at the last hurdle on rolling out [the new map] to solve our idle issue, which was triggering the stalled car on the grid and stuff.

“Unfortunately, we had to revert to basically what we started the year with, which is fine.”

On the other side of the Red Bull Ampol Racing garage, Broc Feeney was the unofficial round winner with finishes of second, first and third for a haul of 278 points.

In the Supercheap Auto wildcard entry, Zane Goddard was classified 22nd, 21st, and 24th, after a time penalty in the latter.

Feeney is now third in the championship, 91 points behind Erebus Motorsport leader Brodie Kostecki and 19 points up on van Gisbergen, who sits fourth.

Meanwhile, Triple Eight is auctioning off the special Feeney and van Gisbergen Indigenous-themed race suits from Hidden Valley, with all proceeds going to the Clontarf Foundation.

Clontarf aims to “to improve the education, discipline, life skills, self-esteem and employment prospects of young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men” through school-based academies.

The auction ends tonight at 19:00 AEST and can be accessed here.