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Triple Eight to investigate pit box wipeout

Triple Eight will investigate a pair of pit box blunders that wiped out car controller Mark Dutton during Supercars practice in Townsville today.

Screen Shot 2022-07-08 at 3.26.33 pm

Rookie Broc Feeney arrived in his pit box too hot on two occasions during pit stop practice in Townsville today.

On both occasions he sent car controller and T8 team manager Dutton flying, one of which was captured by TV cameras.

Luckily Dutton avoided injury in both cases and said the team enjoyed a laugh at his expense.

However he said there will also be a proper debrief on what happened this evening to ensure it doesn't happen in the race.

"Two good ones; one really good one," said Dutton. "I'm totally fine. It didn't hurt too much.

"You see it coming at the last second, but you know it's only going to be a couple of hundred mills. You try and get your toes out of the way. Sometimes you succeed, sometimes you don't.

"The biggest concern is that we want to stop on the marks in the race. It's a bit of a laugh in practice but it's not funny if it happens in the race.

"We see the sense if humour. But we need to learn from it and make sure we don't make the same mistake in the race."

Dutton said the starting point for the debrief will be some procedural changes to the approach to the box that were trialed at last week's test day.

"We were trying some things at the last test day," he said. "We went straight out of Practice 2 into [passenger] rides today, so we haven't had a chance to look at the data and try and analyse and say, okay, clearly what we've brought here hasn't worked.

"It's just how you attack the box. It's a place where you can make or lose time. We and all the teams try and maximise it, but it's that fine balance between attacking hard enough, or attacking too hard, where you lose a lot more than the little you can gain."

While Feeney has extensive experience driving Supercars thanks to his title-winning years in Super3 and Super2, pitstops is something that is new to him in his rookie season.

That is why it has been an area of focus for Triple Eight.

"100 per cent," said Dutton. "We've even seen at different races this year that there are little things, like when you go out on just side tyres, or rear tyres, or three tyres... things that Shane [van Gisbergen] is totally fine with.

"But with Broc, he's feeling that for the first time when he exits the pits."

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