Red Bull searching for a setup

An inability to find a consistent baseline setup is the root cause of Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes' unpredictable 2014 V8 Supercars Championship campaign, says Triple Eight technical chief Ludo Lacroix.

And the Frenchman, who made a rare trackside visit to the Perth 400 to watch over the performance of the Red Bull Racing Australia Holden Commodore VFs, says the team hasn't truly had a handle on the New Generation racer since its introduction in 2013.

"We haven't got a setup that we can say will work roundabout everywhere," Lacroix told v8supercars.com.au. "We are still hunting - and I would say since early last year - for a good base setup, a good base understanding."

Some people might scoff at that considering Triple Eight scored a one-two in the Drivers' Championship and won the Teams' Championship in 2013, both for the third consecutive year.

But the team did struggle at times last year and has been through huge swings in performance in 2014, dominating the Tyrepower Tasmania 400, then battling to finish in the top 10 at the Winton 400. Lowndes and Whincup then went winless at the ITM 500 Auckland, with Shane van Gisbergen showing better pace in the customer Tekno Autosports Commodore.

It was this run of outs that prompted Lacroix's attendance at Barbagallo Raceway, where Lowndes claimed a 6-1-2 result and Whincup went 17-3-4, stepping onto the podium in Race 15 for the first time in eight starts.

In the old 'Project Blueprint' days Triple Eight was renowned for rolling its cars out of the transporter with a baseline setup that consistently worked.

But Lacroix insists no-one has a true handle on the new car, which means results are more unpredictable as engineering teams grapple to place - or keep - their cars in the performance 'window'.

He says the core issue is the 18-inch Dunlop control tyre, which was introduced with the New Generation technical regulations and is more difficult to tune than the old 17-inch tyre with its taller and more pliable sidewall.

"It's obviously clear that the (18-inch) tyre and the way that you use the tyre, whether it be the soft or the hard, has a massive influence," Lacroix said. "It is a very picky thing.

"If you are wrong you are wrong, if you are right you are every right," he said.

"Meantime, the qualifying is very close, so no-one has as yet a good understanding of the tyre and an overall best package because then you walk away."

Lacroix said Ford Performance Racing had clearly arrived at a setup that worked, a conclusion supported by Mark Winterbottom's three wins and the Drivers' Championship lead in his Pepsi Max Falcon FG II and Chaz Mostert's first win for the team last weekend in the 200km Race 16.

"It looks like the Ford has an average setup that seems to work about everywhere; doesn't peak, but doesn't drop. So they have an average setup and then from there they can move on to fine-tune a little bit throughout the weekend.

"We have got some very good setups and some very average setups and the problem is if you come on Friday morning with an average setup and a tiny bit of a mechanical failure somewhere then you shake the car and you shake the whole team.

"From there you can be lucky and take the right road or be unlucky and you're f------."

Lacroix said his attendance at Barbagallo served a number of purposes. He could take in the overall picture and deal with any mechanical issues, allowing the engineers to focus on the racing tasks at hand. And he could also see first hand the state of the tyres as they came off the cars.

"It's very difficult to engineer from home the cars and understand what has happened... you need to be there, you need to feel the tyre, to touch it, to see what is happening, it is very, very important.

"There are things you see happening at home like the behaviour of the car, you see them better at home in front of the TV, that's easy and you see the other cars. But the feel of what has happened through the weekend, what are the key points where we can fine tune and understand the tyre better ... you have got to be at the track."