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Triple Eight’s new weapons

22 Jan 2016
Van Gisbergen and Lowndes set to start the season in new cars as Triple Eight keeps busy in Queensland.
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Triple Eight Race Engineering has confirmed Shane van Gisbergen and Craig Lowndes will both receive new chassis for the 2016 V8 Supercars season. 

Jamie Whincup will continue racing the chassis debuted at Sandown last year, while new teammate van Gisbergen receives a brand new Red Bull car, with Lowndes’ dressed in TeamVortex colours.

Team manager and championship winning engineer Mark Dutton explained it had always been planned to start the season with new chassis.

“We expect and demand big things from all our chassis. The level of attention to detail that is being put into this build is better than ever,”

he told Red Bull Racing Australia’s official website.

“We are constantly trying to improve what we do while not compromising reliability.

“We wanted to start 2016 with all three drivers having brand new chassis, but we altered that plan slightly midway through 2015 when we debuted Jamie’s chassis 040 for Sandown, but for the other two we have stuck to the plan.”

The team began building van Gisbergen’s chassis toward the end of 2015, which is the 12th new gen car built by Triple Eight. 

Lowndes’ race car from last year – in which he won his sixth Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000, and the crew spectacularly rebuilt overnight in New Zealand – becomes the team’s spare. 

Triple Eight plans a new car shakedown before its February test at Queensland Raceway. Though Lowndes is recovering from a broken collarbone he is expected to take part in the test day and be fit for the March 3-6 Clipsal 500 in Adelaide.

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Caltex has been showing sneak peeks of Lowndes' new machine in the build-up to a full launch.

In addition to the three cars it races, Triple Eight also supplies to customer teams Tekno Autosports and Charlie Schwerkolt’s new Team 18 operation. Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport also runs older Triple Eight equipment, 2016 V8 Supercars Dunlop Series entrants Kurt and Jake Kostecki have purchased new gen cars.

Triple Eight is one of many teams starting the season in new equipment, with Chaz Mostert, Rick Kelly and Fabian Coulthard all confirmed to run new chassis. 

DJR Team Penske and Prodrive Racing Australia are planning to introduce new cars early into the season for Scott Pye and Mark Winterbottom respectively.

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