V8 Supercars : EIGHT CARS EXCLUDED FROM RACE THREE OF THE MSS SECURITY CHALLENGE IN MELBOURNE

Sunday 17 March 2013 12:57
By: V8 Supercars

BREAKING: The MSS Security Challenge has been thrown into chaos following an accidental breach of the technical rules by eight cars from yesterday's third race.

The cars of Jamie Whincup, Craig Lowndes, Shane van Gisbergen, Jonathon Webb, Scott Pye, Dean Fiore, Todd Kelly and Michael Caruso have all been excluded from the third race.

The official podium from race three is now Fabian Coulthard, David Reynolds and Jason Bright.

Stewards were busy re-setting the grid for the fourth race as the news broke. Many of those cars were in contention to win the MSS Security Challenge.

The breaches were inadvertent and involved an accidental setting of the ignition timing which breached the rules. It was picked up by V8 Supercar technical staff following the third race.

Nissan Motorsport team owner Todd Kelly said: "The weekend was going pretty much superbly until that news and it's a real shame. It's obviously a penalty that has to be applied, they're the rules and unfortunately there's been an oversight on two of our cars, which has caused us to be in breach of those rules.

"It's hard to be too tough on anybody here for that because of the hours the boys have been doing and the time we've spent on the dyno and trying to turn all the engines away for this weekend you could easily see how that oversight could have crept in.

"The actual breach is of no real significance whatsoever performance wise, but it is a breach of the rules , so I respect the action that they've taken, it's just a shame that it's happened, so we'll definitely be tightening up our procedures in the future to ensure it doesn't happen again."