Supercars responds to claims former champ crippled by dodgy part
Supercars has responded to claims a dodgy part is responsible for “negatively” impacting former champion Will Brown’s 2026 campaign.
On Wednesday afternoon, seven-time champion and now Triple Eight team principal Jamie Whincup said in a lengthy statement to social media an “undersized engine airflow restrictor” had been costing Brown nearly 1.5 tenths of a second per lap all season.
Jamie Whincup put out a team-issued statement about the part. Daniel Kalisz
The restrictor was 1mm smaller than expected. The restrictors are fitted as part of parity measures to keep the Ford Mustang, the Chevrolet Camaro and the Toyota Supra on an even playing field.
The statement said the team discovered the undersized part on Tuesday night during a promised chassis change for Brown, who has endured a torrid season, particularly in qualifying.
Whincup said he would be demanding a please explain from Supercars about why an out-of-specification part was supplied in the first place.
In its own statement released late Wednesday, Supercars explained the restrictor was loaned to the team “for demonstration purposes only” ahead of the team’s season launch event in February.
“The air restrictor subsequently remained fitted to car No.888 through the Perth Super 440. Neither party identified the discrepancy until it was discovered by (Triple Eight Race Engineering) during preparations for next weekend’s event in Ipswich,” it read.
“Throughout the Supercars season, routine scrutineering and compliance checks are carried out at random by Supercars’ technical department, covering a vast range of components and systems. As of the Perth event, the air restrictor fitted to car No.888 had not been selected for inspection during those checks.
“Supercars is reviewing the circumstances surrounding this matter and will evaluate opportunities to strengthen its technical and operational procedures moving forward.”
Brown is yet to claim a race victory in 2026, and has finished on the podium only twice. He did manage to score a pole position for the final race at the Australian F1 Grand Prix in Melbourne in March.
The 2024 champion sits a relatively lowly seventh in the standings. Teammate Broc Feeney is second – a massive 467 points clear of Brown with five race wins.
After the Perth race meeting, where Brown finished in the top-10 only once, Whincup said the team would put Brown in a different chassis for the next race meeting in Ipswich, and the team would “leave no stone unturned (to) find reasons why (Brown) has not been fighting for race wins”,
“At 7pm (Tuesday) night we found a significant issue on (Will’s) car. Since the start of this season, car No.888 has been running with an undersized engine airflow restrictor. This part manages the airflow into the engine and has a significant negative impact on engine performance, and therefore lap time.
“This is not a part we, Triple Eight or Red Bull Ampol Racing, manufacture.
“This is a supplied part from Supercars expected to be the same for all 11 Ford Mustangs, distributed at the start of the season and expected to be run for the whole season.
“We as a team are taking responsibility and want to deeply apologise to everyone involved for allowing this to happen.
“While this error has cost our team a considerable amount of resource, sport is an emotional game and these types of things have knock-on effects bigger than the average 1.5 tenths a lap.
“We will be taking up with Supercars why they have supplied us with what is a controlled component out of specification, which has negatively impacted the performance of car No.888 this season to date.
“We will continue to roll out our new chassis for (Will’s) car at Queensland Raceway and look forward to measuring our capability now we are competing with the same horsepower as the rest of the field.”
2024 Supercars champion Will Brown. Getty
The series organisers are already embroiled in a separate saga, having recently appealed the stewards’ decision not to penalise Grove Racing’s Kai Allen during the Perth round.
The hearing is set for next Monday afternoon.
