Pit tweak led to Triple Eight stop delay

The series leader was held up during his single mandatory stop yesterday when the air spike hose wouldn't reach his car.

That was despite the Kiwi hitting his marks for the stop.

The team had to scramble to get its hands on a spare air spike hose before it could get van Gisbergen's car on its jacks and change the tyres.

He resumed back in the pack and had to fight his way through to seventh.

According to Triple Eight team manager Mark Dutton the issue stemmed back the inclement weather conditions that meant a four-tyre stop was a likely outcome.

That prompted the team to try and reposition the hose to give the crew a clearer passage between the front and back end of the car on the garage side – which led to it getting caught.

"This year you're not seeing a lot of four tyre stops," he told Motorsport.com.

"Because we were confident it would be a four-tyre stop with the weather changing, one of the things on the inside is that the spike line hangs down in the road of the guys running from the back of the car to the front of the car.

"So the guys tried to give it a clearer path and unfortunately in doing so it got caught up.

"It was one of those things where the guys were being really proactive and it just didn't quite work the way we planned."

Dutton added that the repositioning has been reviewed for today's two races to avoid a repeat.

"We can work around it," he said. "We don't need to do the same thing to have the right outcome."

The Triple Eight drivers have plenty to do in today's first race, van Gisbergen qualifying 13th and Jamie Whincup 16th.

They fared better in qualifying for today's second race, Whincup second and van Gisbergen fourth.