It was the incident that marred an otherwise exciting edition of the Bathurst 1000, and now Supercars and their governing body have dished out further sanctions to DJR Team Penske for their breach of FIA rules.
The Confederation of Australian Motorsport (CAMS) conducted a hearing on Saturday and found the Shell V-Power Racing Team guilty of a regulation breach when they enforced controversial team orders during a critical moment in the endurance classic.
After the safety car was deployed on lap 135 following international wildcard Alexander Rossi binning the car at the final corner Fabian Coulthard in the No. 12 Ford Mustang was instructed on the team radio to exercise “extreme caution” and was warned about debris on track as well as overheating issues in the car.
This repeated instruction led to the bizarre scenes of the then third-placed Kiwi backing up the entire field coming onto Conrod Straight, including eventual race runner-up Shane van Gisbergen and Scott McLaughlin.
What was obvious to viewers of the live broadcast was that race winner McLaughlin, who was tucked in behind Jamie Whincup at the time of that fateful safety car, was saved from the possible threat of double stacking during the pit stop that subsequently took place as well as the likely trouble that would be caused by Van Gisbergen.
DJR Team Penske was stripped of 300 points from the teams championship, handed a $250,000 fine, of which $100,000 is suspended until 31 December 2021, and had Coulthard relegated from sixth to last in the final Bathurst 1000 classification.
McLaughlin has been able to retain his maiden Bathurst 1000 win and the first victory at Mount Panorama for the team since 1994. What transpired was not directly of the 26-year-old’s doing and thus it can be understood why the Peter Brock Trophy was left in his and Alex Premat’s hands.
As far as sanctioning the team was concerned, DJR Team Penske have been largely spared. While the fine is the largest ever seen in Supercars, a monetary penalty means little as a precedent when organisations like Penske can bankroll a successful race programme. The same can be said of Triple Eight, who’ve been a juggernaut in the category for more than a decade.
Losing 300 points in the team standings will also have little impact given they lead the championship by 423 points. The importance of the teams standings in Supercars is that it determines the order in which the teams line up in the pit lane the following year.
Triple Eight were team champions in 2018 and thus get the garages at the top end of the pits, giving them the advantage of having a minimal pit exit time after a stop. Even during the Bathurst 1000 this advantage was obviously – when both top-two outfits were forced to double stack, the Red Bull drivers benefitted.
With DJR Team Penske likely to clinch the team title this year, they’ll be the ones who get that sought-after garage space in 2020, which is why they should’ve been excluded from the championship altogether given the severity of their breach in Bathurst.
Where the fallout of this incident crosses the line is the negativity being directed towards Coulthard, who has been heavily criticised for his role in the team orders debacle. Described as being a ‘sacrificial lamb’ by his fellow drivers, the Kiwi stood to gain nothing from following the orders to slow down, and now even that sixth-place finish for him and co-driver Tony D’Alberto has been taken away, making him the biggest loser of the verdict.
A stand must be made against unsportsmanlike behaviour, and while Supercars and CAMS didn’t shatter the earth with the punishment, the matter has been dealt with and the penalties have been handed down.
The damage has already been done in terms of tainting this year’s Bathurst 1000. Rather than being remembered for McLaughlin’s near-perfect weekend culminating in his maiden victory at The Mountain, outsiders and rusted-on fans alike will look at it as the race DJR Team Penske manipulated.
Jacko
Guest
Totally incorrect Ugly.......Whincup and SM were on the same strategy and SVG was at an advantage at the point of the safety car.....The big thing you arnt allowing for is that SVG would have had to double stack if he had come in and that would have cost an extra 15 sec....And if he didnt pit then the 2 extra safety cars meant he had no fuel advantage in the end anyway....So you arnt reading the facts you are applying bias to the situation.....I follow SVG just as much as SM and i have an HQ in the shed so I dont have biases either way
Jacko
Guest
Show us these fuel stats Ugly.....I call BS on your statement...Its Trump-esk
Johnno
Roar Rookie
Agree Jacko....can double stack deliberately and that is OK, doesn’t make sense. It seems people are bashing DJR/Penske for against the spirit when all they did was stop 888 from double stacking, which In my opinion “not in the spirit” as you get a false winner.
Censored Often
Roar Rookie
Check out the supercars data around fuel fill times. #17 would've moved back plenty of places had #12 not cheated as instructed.
Censored Often
Roar Rookie
There's no doubt team orders were invoked to attempt to fix the outcome of the race. Based on valid timing #17 wouldn't have figured in the top group had they not invoked team orders and cheated. Would he have caught up? Probably. Would he have won? We will never know because the race result was contrived and CAMS happily let a billionaire buy a trophy rather than earn it. Alas, it will keep said billionaires cash in the sport a while longer and that's al that matters these days. Anything short of lengthy bans for all involved results in the sport's credibility being tarnished for a long time.
Jacko
Guest
Check out the pitstops on lap 114.....SM in first...Whincup in second...SVG double stacks and blocks SM from getting back out in front of Whincup.....Deliberate act?...It certainly got Whincup out ahead of SM as SM had to turn so sharp he hit his own tyre which had just been removed....That is why Coultard was told to slow field down.....That is called 888 cheating...Where are your calls for Dane to be punished and for 88 to have seasons points removed?...And I own an HQ...
Nick
Roar Guru
It had a total impact on the field...it allowed coulthard to stay in 3rd (he would have dropped to well beyond that if he had to wait and double stack) which in turn allowed him to ensure he could defend and block the chasers when the green flag was waved, and allowed McLaughlin to skip away. If he didn't slow down there's NO chance he would have reentered the course in 3rd.
Jacko
Guest
Sorry Spruce...It would mean a fabricated result leading to a fabricated championship winner meaning far more cheating than we saw at Bathurst.....And we have seen that exact scenario at newcastle with the 888 team...
Jacko
Guest
it had zero impact on the field.....look at the gaps when they went racing again...Zero difference...
Jacko
Guest
this double stacking thing is a joke...A multimillion $$ industry and they cant sort this out? Another thing is why was heimgartners car just dragged over to the barrier....Its not done on lap 30 or 50 so why lap 159? Could it be to give 888 racing a shot at winning rather than finish race on Safety car? Time to ban pitting during a safety car or do what F1 does and lots of UK racing does and have cars maintain Virtual distance...
Jacko
Guest
So no effect to anyone other than Coultard....tander says he wants to buy story a beer for doing it and in the same race SVG blocked Scott when double stacking....Why can 888 tell their drivers to let their other drivers thru without fighting and that not be considered team orders? Why does any team deserve all the points from every previous round taken away...did they not earn them? I dont follow Brands...I follow drivers and being a Kiwi I follow SVG, Scotty, Heimgartner Stanaway and Coultard....We were all aware what was going on so why wasnt 888 aware what was going on and get Whincup to slow down as well...SVG was on the radio the whole time saying wgat was happening so they cant say they didnt know.....It seems really poor form to accues DJR of concocting results when the controlling body has changed the Holden 4 times to make them faster and made 2 changes to the ford to make it slower ( 6 changes in Holdens favor ) plus 3 changes to Nissan to make them faster ...and all done after they did all their pre season testing to ensure equality......The season has been a shambles from day one and its the governing body that is to blame....Any gains that Scott got from the Coultard thing were also the same for Whincup yet he and the 888 team made bad decisions after the event which cost them any chance....Then there was 2 more safety cars after lap 135 which meant any so called gains were negated....
Jawad Yaqub
Roar Guru
G'day Johnno, so on Lap-137 when they went green again after the sixth Safety Car there was a gap of 3.2 seconds between McLaughlin and the third placed car of James Golding. SVG was only half a second behind the #34 too.
Harvey Wilson
Roar Rookie
IMO, the mistake Coulthard made was dropping back so far. If he had left a gap of 5-10 seconds, not much would have been thought of it and people would have been talking about what a great tactic to minimise double stacking in the pits.
Johnno
Roar Rookie
I’m going to go out on a limb here. If team orders are for Van Gisbergen to pit as they new this would block in McLaughlin & then give Whincup an unforeseen advantage, legal but my opinion not in the spirit. That would be OK?
Johnno
Roar Rookie
Jawad....can you confirm this for me as I think it is important to the discussion. If the cars had banked up so there was no gap, then the only impact of Courtney slowing down was it prevented double stacking & blocking in McLaughlin which I think, whilst legal, is against the spirit.
Nick
Roar Guru
Yes - because it didn't impact any other drivers ability to win the race at hand. And that's what needs to be considered. The race. The scenario you've mentioned has happened before in f1 numerous times. It's not cheating. It's not right, but it's not wrong either. If it is a scrap amongst the team and only the team, it's not that big an issue. It's a huge issue when team orders unfairly impact another team's drivers ability to win a race. All the recent team orders 'controversies' in f1 had no material impact on another team's drivers chance to win. The multi 21 issue didn't impact other drivers, the Austria 2002 GP, the Indianapolis GP (where Schumacher and Barrichello tried to 'dead heat' the race), Bottas moving aside for Hamilton. 3rd place wasn't unfairly robbed a chance to win... And there is nothing wrong with using your teammates car to block and prevent a crucial overtake. There's everything wrong with slowing down to a stop on the safety car. That's cheating.
shifty
Roar Rookie
I’m interested to know when you think the planned script was written? “Team orders in F1 don’t impact other drivers – it’s usually just leads to a fight within the same team.” Hypothetical Scenario: Last race of the season 2 drivers from the same team lets call them JW and SVG are 1st and 2nd on the road. It’s the last sector of the last lap and SVG needs to finish 1st to claim that season’s championship and “team orders” are implemented in a coded msg “JW conserve fuel, conserve fuel” even though no mention of fuel load has been discussed in laps prior. SVG is 10 seconds behind JW so JW slows to crawl and allows SVG to make up 10 seconds gap in the last sector and finish first to claim the drivers championship. It not only affects the race outcome but also the championship outcome. You’d be ok with this because it didn’t affect any other drivers?
Jawad Yaqub
Roar Guru
Yeah, Ryan Story was pretty lucky to have not faced any sanctions himself over it.
Nick
Roar Guru
The point is that f1 came down really hard on planned cheating. And that's what this was. Stone cold cheating. I'd also ban the DJR team boss for the rest of the season too. he was clearly the architect.
Jawad Yaqub
Roar Guru
Yes Moose, I agree with the part about DJR Team Penske being excluded from the constructor's championship at worst. After all, it wasn't McLaughlin's call to the team to have his teammate back up the traffic so it would be unfair to undo his and Prémat's work during that weekend. Schumacher was directly involved with Villeneuve in 1997 thus justifying that penalty to a degree and McLaren in 2007 was also in part a byproduct of the ongoing feud between Max Mosley and Ron Dennis. Sure they deserved to be penalised for their role in Spygate, but to the extent in which those sanctions were laid down were a bit too far - all because things were personal between the two. Could have been a similar situation with DJR Team Penske if Supercars had a vengeful leader at its helm - but thankfully it doesn't.