Photo: Fox Sports (Broadcast)

Supercars officials stand by safety car decision

Senior officials from Supercars have defended their decision to attempt to hold Jamie Whincup behind the safety car in race two at Pukekohe, despite the Triple Eight driver believing he wasn’t the leader of the race at the time.

An early safety car in Race 24 was deployed to recover the stricken Erebus Motorsport Holden Commodore of David Reynolds, which had stopped on track thanks to a throttle issue.

While the #9 was able to limp back to the pits after eventually re-firing, those who had not yet pitted in the race came to the pit lane for their first stops. Whincup was the first car on the road of those who had stopped earlier in the race and was held behind the safety car with orange lights illuminated though he chose to go past, believing he wasn’t the race leader and losing time to those in the pits.

With Whincup at the back of the train, Lee Holdsworth moved up to the rear of the safety car but the Tickford driver and those behind him up to Whincup were sent around again, dropping a handful of spots.

Though Whincup was later penalised for passing the safety car when instructed not to, the damage had been done to Holdsworth and others in contention for a strong finish, dropping them well outside the top ten and having to fight up the rest of the order throughout the rest of the race.

Ex-Supercars technical director and current deputy race director David Stuart outlined the process under safety car conditions and the rationale behind Whincup’s pit lane penalty.

“First of all, in a situation like this and a circuit like this, we’ve got a short lap and a long pit lane,” Stuart said.

“We had an incident that we deployed the safety car for…and at that time, because of the long pit lane and the short lap, we need to understand who is the leader of the race and get the right person. That’s why the orange lights were on the safety car, to give us an opportunity to sort out where the leader was positioned at the time.

“The rules are clear on the deployment of the safety car. We will always try to pick up the leader and on a long circuit with a shorter pit lane, that gives us the opportunity to find the leader and pick the leader up but at the same time, you’ve got the recovery on track.

“As it turns out that car (David Reynolds) eventually made its way back to pit lane under its own power, however, the rules are very clear on safety car deployment; if the orange lights are on, you stay behind the safety car.

“We would’ve been able to identify the leader and wave cars through and have the leader at the time.

“The leader of the race is always the loser in a safety car scenario; however, with car #88 going past the safety car, we lost the opportunity to be able to evaluate the situation in a calm manner and we needed to avoid the situation where we had half the field a lap down.”

Experienced racer and long-time race director Tim Schenken backed up Stuart’s comments, and put the blame of the confusion solely on Whincup.

“The issue is that when we deploy the safety car, in some circumstances, as David said with this circuit having a short lap and long pit, you don’t know immediately who the leader is,” Schenken said.

“You have to hold the first car approaching and determine where the leader is at the Safety Car 2 Line which is after the pit exit. That would determine and confirm who the actual leader is.

“Anything could happen in the meantime, the car who people think the leader is could stall in pit lane and have some issue so we have to be confident that when we identify the leader, we pick up the right car.”

Whincup was left fuming after the race and was adamant that he was in the right, despite being shown the orange lights on the safety car and told to hold position while everything was sorted.

“(The safety car) should have had green lights on,” Whincup said.

“I’m sure somewhere in the rule book somewhere they’re allowed to keep the yellow (lights) on because that’s for if there’s a car in the wall in a dangerous position but that wasn’t the case.

“They should have had green lights on, I wasn’t the leader of the race. It was either stay behind and get completely screwed like the FPR (Tickford Racing) guys, or just try to, hopefully… I gave them the opportunity to put the greens on.

“I stopped, waited, waited, waited, but they were just all asleep, so I just went though. Our position wouldn’t have changed much. We would have been well back, ten plus. We ended up 15th, 16th. So really we were done anyway so it didn’t make any difference.”

Officials will have a month to review the decision in the race ahead of the Bathurst 1000, starting on October 10 and culminating in The Great Race on Sunday the 13th, kicking off the Enduro Cup for 2019.