Whincup slams Supercars over disqualification

The Red Bull-backed squad made a perfect start to the Gen3 era yesterday evening as Shane van Gisbergen and Broc Feeney scored a historic one-two.

However the team was thrown out of the race this morning after being found guilty of a tech breach.

The issue was a dry ice helmet fan system that was fitted to the driver's side of the cockpit rather than the passenger side, as per the rules.

The stewards summary outlines that T8 team manager Mark Dutton met with Supercars Head of Motorsport Adrian Burgess on Thursday to discuss driver cooling.

According to T8 the system was shown to Burgess and verbal approval was provided, however that was disputed by Burgess in the hearing last night.

That effectively left Motorsport Australia with no option to scrub the cars from the race, despite acknowledging that it appeared to be an honest miscommunication.

The outcome has left T8 managing director Whincup fuming with Supercars given his ongoing belief that the system had approval.

"We can’t believe the way we’ve been treated by Supercars," Whincup told Motorsport.com.

"We’re not trying to sneak around the rules in any way, shape or form.

"We presented our cars, we got approval from the Head of Motorsport, we brought him into our garage and showed him what we were doing.

"He gave approval and we went racing.

"There’s all this confusion over whether we added something extra to the car, no we didn’t, it’s only the location of where the driving cooling was.

"If anything it’s a disadvantage to the performance of the car not an advantage. It was only placed there due to the lack of time because of everything else we’ve been doing for Supercars to get these cars for the race track.

"We got approval, we haven’t broken any rule. [It’s] crazy, crazy, crazy, we just can’t believe the way we’ve been treated by Supercars."

When asked if blatantly adding dry ice to the system in front of TV cameras supported the notion that approval had been sought and supplied, Whincup said: "100 per cent. We’re not trying to do anything untoward or anything against the rules in any way shape or form.

"We read the rules, we showed the Head of Motorsport exactly what we were doing and competed that way.

"At no time were we trying to hide or do anything untoward. That’s the disappointing thing."

Triple Eight has been at war with Supercars over driver cooling all weekend, having been told to remove heat shielding from its cars on Thursday night.

That decision was then reversed on Friday night following feedback from Shane van Gisbergen regarding cabin temperature.

According to Whincup, Supercars has let its drivers down when it comes to driver comfort and safety with the Gen3 cars.

"This is on top of Supercars complete lack of competency to keep the cabin temps under control and the driver safety at the forefront," he said.

"We offered plenty of advice before the round, most of it was scrapped through committee-based decision making.

"[The heat shielding] was a half-step a day before competition and we’ve been talking about this for weeks, months.

"The night before competition they make this rushed, half-arsed decision to go in the right direction.

"It was never a competent call on ensuring that our drivers were not going to be in the state they were last night."

Triple Eight is one a handful of teams to use an electric cooling system connect to the cool suits worn by the drivers.

However the system, known as Chill Out, doesn't include and integrated helmet fan, leading to T8 coming up with a seperate dry ice system to feed cold air to the drivers.

Following the DSQ the dry ice portion of the helmet fan system has now been shifted to the passenger side of the car for today's race.

The paddock curfew was extended to 11pm last night having initially been set to end at 9pm, time that T8 was forced to make the most of to execute the changes.

"Of course we’ve moved it to the other side which is actually a good thing because it’s actually better in that location," said Whincup.

"These cars are naturally heavier on the driver’s side because the driver sits there, so you do whatever you can to push things over to the other side.

"We were here until midnight last night when every other team was home in bed because of course we don’t want to be stubborn and say no we’ve got approval.

"We did everything we could to move it over to the other side which meant we only had a few hours sleep."