Triple Eight planning car build expansion

With Car of the Future-spec Triple Eight cars in demand from Dunlop Series teams, Triple Eight is looking bolster staff so that it can build new cars more efficiently, and without over-working the travelling members of the team between rounds.

The expansion move comes from lessons learnt from the team’s decision to build a new car for Whincup mid-way through the 2015 season, which debuted at the Sandown 500.

“Last year we did a mid-season build, and with the calendar, and the staff on hand, it was the wrong thing to do,” team manager Mark Dutton told Motorsport.com.

“It still worked, but a mid-season build, the extra stress and workload it put on everyone wasn’t the best thing to do. So, we went ‘okay, we shouldn’t do that again’.

“But with the demand of the development series, we’re looking at whether or not we can put more staff on to help that. The calendar this year with the quick turnarounds is worse than ever, so we don’t have time for our race team guys to be building cars. We’re advertising for someone online, and we should be able to get that happening without impacting the team.”

New chassis for Whincup

Should the expansion plans come off, it could well mean Jamie Whincup will debut a new car later this season.

Both Shane van Gisbergen and Craig Lowndes started the season in brand new chassis, while Whincup is out of sync with the others.

While Dutton says the preferred plan is to have all three drivers starting each season in fresh hardware, Whincup may well still make a pre-enduro switch to a brand new car later this year.

“We’re undecided. We’ve got some plans in action,” he added. “We’ll look towards [the enduros].

“The initial plans were just to try and give everyone fresh cars for the start of the season then get through the season with them, fresh cars again for the next season and so on. Which also works in well with the DVS teams as well, because they want cars for the start of next season.

“We’re not committed to giving Jamie a new one this year just yet, but we’re putting systems in place to make any car build less taxing on the travelling team members.”

Better business model

Regardless of whether or not Triple Eight decides on a mid-season build for Whincup, Dutton says an expansion of the chassis production arm of the team makes simple business sense.

“The good thing with the development series is that we can be turning cars over more frequently,” he said.

“It’s not a performance thing as such, but it’s a good business model. And it means we can have more staff on hand, because nobody just does one role, everyone does a little bit of everything.

“So it’s working well, this whole selling cars to the DVS. It’s a positive thing that’s working well not just for us, but other teams as well.”