Burning questions: Roland Dane

The dominant force in Supercars racing expanded to three cars in 2016, with Shane van Gisbergen joining six-time champion Jamie Whincup in the Red Bull Racing Australia line-up while Craig Lowndes moved to a new Caltex Vortex-backed entry with Ludo Lacroix returning to pitlane full-time as his engineer.

There have been hiccups and organisational snafus along the way – and they were to some extent expected – but as the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship enters a mid-winter break the T8 crew are where we all expected them to be, at or near the top of the points table.

Between them van Gisbergen (four), Whincup (two) and Lowndes (two) have won eight of the 17 races conducted so far. No other team has won more than twice, nor has there been more than one driver from any other team win.

Drivers' Championship: 1st – Jamie Whincup; 2nd – Shane van Gisbergen; 4th – Craig Lowndes.

Teams' Championship: 1st – Red Rull Racing Australia; 9th - TeamVortex (first single car team).

Standout moment this season: First 1-2-3 came in WA, with a second triple treat at Ipswich. Wanneroo Saturday was also the first win for TeamVortex and came after an inspired two-stop call by engineer Ludo Lacroix. Since a successful test day the team’s three drivers have won the last five races between them to take control of the championship.

VASC: Assess Triple Eight’s year so far.

RD: It’s been pretty good given that we have had a lot on our plate with going to three cars. Having said that, we could have won probably three more races pretty easily and so we haven’t done a perfect job by any means.

VASC: How has Mark Dutton coped with the additional responsibility brought by that expansion?

He is responsible for the day-to-day operation of all three cars back at the factory and he has done a very good job of that. But he also has some very good people around him, with Kris Goos, who is the factory floor manager back at base, and Andrew Simpson (TeamVortex team manager). So it’s a collective effort and a good group of people who know what they are doing and to be honest don’t need too much direction to understand what their roles are and getting them done.

What’s your take on Craig Lowndes’ transition to TeamVortex?

I think Craig has responded very well to being in his own environment. He’s got a very good group of people around him. Internally we call them Dad’s Army. They aren’t really because there are a couple of critical people in there who are not over 40 – which is the definition of being in Dad’s Army here – like John McGregor (data engineer) and Nick Petrons (crew chief). So it’s a bit unkind, but that’s what we call it internally with Ludo (Lacroix), Simmo and Craig.

Craig has risen to that challenge of working with a different set of people from an engineering point of view very well. And while Ludo has always been in the background and so has John McGregor now they are upfront with him and I believe Craig has only grown through this year as this has become very much a garage based around him. He definitely likes that.

Shane van Gisbergen has had some ups and downs but no-one has won more races this year.

Shane took a little while to settle in and get the car to his liking with (engineer) Grant McPherson. He has been quick but he has made a couple of silly errors that have cost him. In Darwin on the Sunday he actually got away with it when he speared off on lap one and ended up winning the race. Saturday at Darwin was a silly error, which he knows, because he could have won that race.

In Tasmania it was a little bit unlucky but it was an error going off at the hairpin. He was unlucky not to be able to get going so he ended up with a DNF where he might have ended up with a 15th if he had got out of the gravel.

So he has had a couple of errors which he is very aware of and it’s something that he has go to work on. But overall he has been fast and won races, which is what we expected.

In Tassie he wouldn’t speak to the media afterwards, which we thought was just sooking, but it also became apparent that he was really burned up and upset about making that mistake. We don’t see that intensity in public too often, but you obviously do.

He is highly competitive but he also just loves racing cars and he does it in a very uncomplicated manner. He just wants to get on with driving, but at the same time he has developed hugely already this year out of the car in the way he conducts himself. We see it at sponsor functions how he has really raised his game. He has watched and learned from the other two how to conduct himself. And he plays to his strengths and his strengths are great stories to tell about the racing he does around the world, but also he has incredible knowledge of motorsport both contemporary and historical around the world.

Jamie Whincup emerged from the Ipswich championship round having doubled his points lead but finished second in both races to Shane and Craig. What’s his mood like at the moment?

I think Jamie is pretty content but also by the same token he realises he has to bring his A-game every weekend as has the collective group on his car to keep ahead of not only Shane and Craig but also several other people in the hunt, including Mark Winterbottom. Jamie knows how to win championships better than anyone else driving currently and so he knows full well when you can’t win you still have to be collecting points and so far this year he has done a better job than anyone else.

Has he done a pefect job? No he hasn’t, but he has done a better job than anyone else and it’s a game of relativity.

Can the Jamie and Shane’s relationship survive a battle for the championship?

There’s no guarantees in life but I see them getting on well at the moment. Craig and Jamie have had ups and downs over the years but they have always managed to put them behind them. And everyone in the team – all three drivers – have a very high awareness that this business is a team of people above all else and they don’t want to let anyone down.

Being part of a team that presents you with a chance to win virtually every race is a good argument for good behaviour… although Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton don’t seem to see it that way.

Maybe some drivers are more political than others – always have been. But our three are very apolitical. So it can be disruptive and there are one or two drivers in the championship that are known to be very political and I am glad they don’t drive for Triple Eight.

Jamie can be pretty downbeat even after a dominant win. Is that form of self and team motivation: ‘if we don’t try harder we won’t be competitive’?

I don’t think it’s that. Sometimes I think he is just too honest outwardly. He just tells it as he absolutely sees it at that moment, which is ‘yeah the car was good but it could have been better’, and so that’s what he says. And sometimes that’s very appropriate and other times it may not be appropriate. But he absolutely says what he thinks at that moment, for instance ‘yeah I won the race but I know the car could have been better’.

When the car is perfect he says so, and when he knows the car is absolutely in the sweet spot he says so and Shane internally is certainly very much the same. He will say ‘the car couldn’t have been better’ and then even though he has won a race the next day he’ll say ‘yeah we were maybe lucky to get away with that because it wasn’t perfect’. So they will both tend to just tell it how it is without trying to dress something up or ignore something.

I don’t think it’s a matter of pressure. That’s what they say when they get out of the car, that’s how they felt on the day.

Is Mark Winterbottom the only viable challenger to Triple Eight for the drivers’ championship?

Making an assumption like that before the enduros would be crazy given what can happen in that environment where you have a whole different set of variables thrust upon us.

But on the surface of it he is certainly far and away the strongest (opposition). Whether anyone else pops up remains to be seen, but Mark Winterbottom as he has been for many years, has always been there or thereabouts and it would be crazy to ignore him.

There is a lot of respect here for (Winterbottom’s 2016 Pirtek Enduro Cup co-driver) Dean Canto; he is a good guy as well as proving himself to be a very able co-driver over many years.

And we probably expect them to be a formidable combination come the enduros. You could still have someone else pop up purely because of the number of points that are on the table and if we screw up ourselves in some way. So it would be crazy to make that assumption with those three big events still to come.

Mentioning co-drivers, do you have any second thoughts about your decision to sign Alex Premat to pair with Shane van Gisbergen in the Pirtek Enduro Cup?

Me no, but I think one or two people might be more nervous but I am not.

I think that he will grasp the opportunity with both hands.

He is fast, anyone who doesn’t think Alex is fast didn’t watch him develop over the last few years. But he needs to relax, and I hope we will give him the right atmosphere to relax and to not make mistakes. We just need him to bring his speed to the table while also understanding it isn’t necessary to be the fastest person on the day to be a good co-driver.