Erebus takes blame for $10,000 fine

Erebus Motorsport V8 has blamed an internal breakdown in communications for its illegal simultaneous activation of two pressure sensors on the power steering rack of Lee Holdsworth's Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG that resulted in a $10,000 fine with $7500 suspended.

The breach was discovered during Friday practice for the Perth 400 meeting and Holdsworth's times were scrubbed from the first two sessions. The penalty was then imposed by the CAMS V8 stewards, agreed to by the team on Saturday and publicly confirmed Sunday.

A long standing V8 Supercars rule dictates only one can sensor be connected to the steering rack and recording data at any one time. The restriction is intended to be a cost cutting measure.

Erebus gained permission to fit a second sensor on the condition that only one was active at any time.

"Power steering has been an issue since the beginning of the year and we haven't been able to test and practice sessions have been reduced, so you don't have the opportunity to do any troubleshooting or fault finding," explained Erebus team manager David Stuart.

"We applied to V8 Supercars to fit an extra power steering pressure sensor ... and they approved its use provided we only logged one sensor at a time. So we fitted that up, but unfortunately through an internal breakdown in our own communication process we had both active at the same time."

V8 Supercars general manager motorsport Damien White explained why the stewards had elected to impose a fine as well as scrub the practice session results.

"If the penalty was simply exclusion from the results of practice it would have been a non-penalty and teams may have then considered that it's worth running additional sensors in practice if the only outcome is loss of times," he said.

"It's worth noting the Stewards have successfully applied the recently confirmed principles under the Recommended Penalties.They added a monetary fine due to the fact it was practice and exclusion would have meant little and, additionally, they suspended $7500 after giving consideration to the teams' defence. By having $10,000 hanging over this type of breach, I doubt any team would take the risk, even if only in practice."

Stuart insisted the team gained no competitive advantage from the additional data logging capability.

"It's not like we have changed the ignition map of an engine, or we are running brake rotors in the reverse direction - which are all things that have happened in the past.

"But the judicial system of V8 Supercars has deemed it a serious breach hence the hefty fine."

Stuart confirmed the team had no intention of using the data to tune Holdsworth's car at Barbagallo Raceway. Instead it had been downloaded for study back at the workshop.

"You are a race meeting, you have three 20 minute practice sessions, you don't have time to analyse that data while you are looking for performance data for the car."