The Holden Racing Team and Erebus Motorsport will conduct detailed investigations of data and setups to try and establish why their cars suffered left-rear tyre failures in Race 16 of the V8 Supercars Championship at the Perth 400 yesterday.
The chances of James Courtney and teammate Garth Tander, and Lee Holdsworth and teammate Will Davison posting strong results in the 200km mini-marathon were destroyed by the failures.
Courtney was particularly hard done by as he looked a real chance to continue his streak of podium finishes in each round of the 2014 Championship. Instead he fought on to a 15th place finish and dropped from fourth to fifth in the Championship.
“The tyre went coming off the kerb at the last corner so it couldn’t have happened at a worse spot, because I had to hobble the whole way round,” said Courtney. “If it had happened coming down the hill we still could have maybe been sixth or seventh.”
Holdsworth finished 18th, Tander 22nd and Davison 24th.
While low tyre pressures were commonly speculated as the cause of the failure of the control Dunlop soft tyres, Tander ran 42 laps to the finish on his next set of tyres and Courtney 39 on the same pressures as the failed rubber.
However, Erebus did raise the pressure on the tyres run by Holdsworth and Davison for the rest of the race as a precautionary measure.
Other potential causes of the failures could be debris, kerb hopping or camber and toe angle of the rear suspension geometry. The tyres also could also have been damaged during qualifying sessions when pressures are often run lower than in races.
“We have to sit down and go through and see whether it is pressure induced, whether it is setup induced or whether it is kerb,” said Walkinshaw Racing technical chief Mathew Nilsson. “Unfortunately in these scenarios, because the tyre destroys itself, you often lose your evidence.”
Intriguingly, while the HRT Commodores both suffered failures, the other two Walkinshaw Commodores of Tim Slade and Nick Percat did not have tyre dramas.
Tyre supplier Dunlop recommends a pressure minimum of 18 psi but it is known that teams often drop below that figure in search of performance. Jeld-Wen Falcon driver Jack Perkins suffered two left-rear tyre failures on Saturday that were linked to low pressures.
An aggressive saw tooth kerb at the exit of turn five was also suggested as a possible cause of the failures because of new bitumen laid behind, encouraging drivers to take more aggressive line.
“The fact both teams had the issue a couple of laps apart suggested they might have rolled the dice a bit on pressures,” said Dunlop motorsports V8 Supercars operations manager Kevin Fitzsimons. “If it was across a lot of cars we would be looking pretty closely at it, but because it’s two teams … I am relatively comfortable that we can put our finger pretty close to what it was.”
One common issue across the four failed tyres was a groove that could have been caused by rubbing on a ride height block or rear guard. However, Davison’s failed tyre also had cuts on the outer wall which suggested it may have been punctured for a different reason.
“We need to go back and have a look,” said Erebus Motorsport team manager David Stuart. “The tyre pressures we used today were no different to what we used yesterday and we had zero issues, and they failed earlier in the race than we ran on a stint yesterday.”
