James Courtney fire prompts emergency changes

James Courtney fire prompts emergency changes

Supercars has been forced to make a number of changes after the fires involving both Nick Percat and James Courtney at Albert Park.

Percat’s car caught fire on Friday, while Courtney’s went up in smoke on Saturday.

Both Mustangs were seriously damaged, and the category is racing to understand the cause of the fires.

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The Gen3 cars were introduced this year, and both fires started in the front left corner of the car.

The most drastic change is abandoning the traditional standing start, instead beginning the race behind the safety car.

“This is obviously very, very serious,” said five-time champion Mark Skaife on Fox Sports.

“From a safety perspective everyone is working very hard. We had all of the team owners and technical directors together last night to go through an action plan to mitigate the risk today.

“There’s about eight major items we’ve put into place. One of those items is (we’re) going to start the race behind the safety car, because we believe the exhaust being superheated at the start, when you’re sitting there on the rev-limiter before a standing start, is actually part of this.

“Both of the incidents have happened on the opening lap. We believe there’s something from a temperature perspective that’s setting this off.

“The plan is to do a forensic investigation, it’s a little bit like an air crash investigation. You’re not going to fix this overnight.

“What you do need to do is acknowledge that we have to understand what the risk is.

“There’s not a single person in this industry who knows what the source of this is. We don’t actually know yet. It’s going to take a bit of time.”

Triple Eight’s Broc Feeney took the win on Sunday morning from Andre Heimgartner with Brodie Kostecki third.

Bryce Fulwood crossed the line in fourth, but copped a 15-second time penalty for an unsafe release in the pitlane which dropped him all the way down to 18th.

Kostecki took out the Larry Perkins trophy, which is awarded to the driver who takes the most points across the weekend.

The Erebus racing driver has also taken the championship lead after six of the season’s 28 races.

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