Driving around in circles

Jamie Whincup has been a part of Triple Eight Race Engineering as a driver since he joined the team in 2006. “My father bought me a go-kart when I was seven years old, so racing was originally a hobby,” Whincup tells me. “Fast forward, and the whole thing just got out of control and has become my profession for 20 years. I was very happy to join what I regarded as the best team in the country in 2006. And they’ve gone from strength to strength. And we’ve won many races, but it must be stated that we are an engineering company that showcases our talents on the racetrack.”

Now Managing Director, Whincup is straight-forward with his descriptions of what Triple Eight does. “Motorsport has always been about getting a team of people together, to build a race car, take it to the track and race our mates, try to go around in circles quicker than them and get to the finish line before everybody else,” he adds. “It’s pretty simple.”

Whincup also says there are two parts to the equation. It’s about trying to engineer the unfair advantage. Trying to engineer a car that’s faster than anybody else’s. And then of course going to the racetrack and trying to outperform everybody else with their setup and strategy and driving faster or quicker pitstops.

“Our technical director is Jeremy Moore. He’s been with Triple Eight Racing right from the very start, about 20 years,” explains Whincup. “He did go over to Germany to design the RSR for Porsche for five years. And then he returned to Triple Eight.”

“Engineering R&D is massively important to a race team,” says Whincup. “Motor racing involves a sophisticated race car to go around the track very, very fast. But it has to be very reliable as well. We’re constantly balancing between making a component or a car go as fast as possible. But the biggest cost in motorsport is a DNF. That’s a Did Not Finish. We very much have to finish the race. We cannot afford to have a DNF, but we need to get there as quick as possible. That’s the big challenge. Plus our deadlines are critical. When we have a race meeting, that date is set. We can’t change that. If a part isn’t ready, we can’t just push it out a week. We have to hit the deadlines.

That’s all part of the challenge to get the best engineered car to the track at that race meeting deadline, to go out there, compete and then come back and improve it for the next time.

Triple Eight Race Engineering produces parts for their own two cars as well as supplying parts for the entire Supercar Championship field. But there have been those times when there was no public race meets. When COVID hit, a team of talented engineers turned their creative minds to help the wider community. “This was when Triple Eight pivoted their designer minds to create three iterations of medical ventilators. In about three months, we were ready to go. In the end the project wasn’t required, but it was a great example of how quickly we could re-kit and prepare to build, which is pretty much anything. We have inhouse designers, manufacturers, with electronics experience, all in one building. In the end though, we went back to concentrate on building even better race cars.”

Gen3

Supercars have just debuted their brand-new race car, called Gen3. All designed and built by Triple Eight Race Engineering. The complete redesign of the chassis, suspension, the entire car was redesigned and is also run by every competitor in the field. A lot of the car now is ‘Controlled Design’. The only part of the ‘Car of the Future’ Supercar to come across to Gen3 was the transaxle, which is like a gearbox and differential system all-in-one, set up in the back of the car. In the chassis, is tubular chrome alloy. Whincup says there is 300M grade steel in the spindles, and a little bit of stainless. “But as far as exotic materials go,” he says, “they’re strategically ruled out in the rule book to help keep the costs under control.”

“Triple Eight Race Engineering has now built infrastructure to design and manufacture a brand-new race car, which was debuted at the start of the year,” says Whincup. “We are nine months in, and there are a few parts needing to be redesigned and improved during the year. But we’re sitting here with design and manufacturing capability of the category’s biggest Motorsport brand looking for a new challenge.”

The last time AMT magazine spoke with Triple Eight Race Engineering, in 2012, the latest race car weighed in at 1,500kgs. The spec of the Gen3 has massively changed mainly through design and the use of material as well. “The cars now come in around 1,350kgs,” explains Whincup. “That as you can appreciate, is a massive reduction in weight. Over a hundred kgs lighter than the previous car. The ceiling is also one hundred millimetres lower, so the roof can fit the modern Mustang and Camaro. The build is 100mm wider as well. So has a much wider stance, which helps with road grip around the corners.”

Mindset and culture

The team at Triple Eight Race Engineering strive for a culture of playing their part to make sure their cars succeed. “All of the roles here at Triple Eight are unbelievably important pieces of the chain to be successful on the track. The great thing about sport is you can perform at your absolute best and ‘smash it out of the park’, but your opposition can go one better and you come home deflated.”

“There’s no set budget, so to speak, but we must keep improving, staying in front of the opposition who are also moving forward very fast. It’s a very motivating world to be in and it creates great drive, passion and purpose for the 70-odd people we have here at Triple Eight.”

The safety of these vehicles has also come a long way. While we are just trying to go fast and trying to be as light as possible, we’re all for forever improving safety in the vehicle as well with window nets, firebombs and crumple zones. The list goes on and on.”

Partnerships

Triple Eight Race Engineering is very proud of the fact they represent some of the biggest listed brands in the world. “We represent Red Bull and Ampol, and then we have companies like Supercheap Auto, National Storage, Chevrolet, Harvey Norman, HP, as part of our corporate partner lineup. That’s a reflection of our quality assurance. So, we absolutely have to make sure that we represent brands in the best possible light.”

Jamie Whincup visited AMTIL’s Australian Manufacturing Week trade show this year, and has been interested to work with the Australian manufacturing community on new ventures.

“We’ve geared up to design and manufacture this new Gen3 car, and we’ve stocked the shelves,” he says. “We’d love to collaborate with other designers and manufacturers, to be able to utilise our highly skilled team. Some people might think we’d be too expensive, but this is not necessarily the case. The focus of this new Gen3 car is to reduce the costs, while still be able to manufacture high-quality componentry that can be manufactured efficiently with our expertise, high performance, attention to detail and quality control.”

The Gen3 development focused on a lower cost vehicle, compared to the ‘Car of the Future’ which was superseded in 2023. “Our focus is on being able to design something that’s quicker, cheaper, and more efficient to manufacture,” says Whincup. Triple Eight’s manufacturing capability begins with their five CNC machines, a big fabrication area. They also have an ABB robot with a welding head attached.

Fabrication

Mark Dutton is Triple Eight’s Team Manager. AMT spoke to him about the range of fabrication machines on hand in the garage. Triple Eight currently has five Haas CNC machines in the machineshop, two 5-axis and one 4-axis mill, alongside two CNC lathes with living tooling. “With our highly skilled machinists, we have been able to consistently produce high precision components for ourselves, every Supercars’ team in pitlane and non-motorsport customers including Qantas.”

“Alongside our incredibly talented manual fabricators, we have our CNC fabrication capabilities with a 5-axis tube laser cutter,” says Dutton, “and a flat bed laser cutter being programmed by our laser cutting specialist with over 20 years experience.”

Their 5-axis multi-stack CNC mandrel bender has produced the exhaust system for every racing Camaro competing in Supercars, along with a range of other components used throughout the race cars.

Triple Eight’s large dual station robotic cell houses the ABB robot equipped with top-of-the-line Fornius CMT welding technology, big enough to have two current Supercar chassis on jigs simultaneously if needed. “The single robot tracks between the two high-capacity rotary stations so that it can safely weld in one cell while a technician is unloading or preparing the next job to maximise productivity,” explains Dutton. “The ability for the robot to utilise the track and rotator simultaneously makes it an 8-axis system.”

“At Triple Eight, we are constantly looking to increase our capacity and capabilities so we have a Trumpf Robotic Welding Cell joining the team early in the new year. This will be perfect for rapid production of smaller components,” says Dutton. “With its teach learning programming a real time saver, the quality of Trumpf means it is built for getting the job done with precision and speed, a perfect match for Triple Eight.”

“This Trumpf robotic weld cell is our newest fabrication tool,” adds Whincup. This unit is designed to fabricate small quantities at a high precision capability. “This is perfect for our racing components because we have thousands of different parts but we only need quantities of say, 30. The ability to quickly switch to fabricated multiple items in a single day is important.”

Bathurst 1000

The Bathurst 1000 is by far the biggest event of the year. “It’s like our Grand Final, although it’s not the last race of the season,” he says. “It’s the Melbourne Cup of Motorsport, really. It’s the one event that, there’ll be millions of people that don’t watch motorsport all year, but they certainly tune in to see the Bathurst results, similar to the Melbourne Cup.”  To Whincup, there are three things that make up Bathurst. “The 60-year history of the Bathurst 1000 race is fantastic. The circuit itself is magnificent. It’s in the top five circuits in the world. We’re very lucky to have a circuit of that quality here in country New South Wales.”

“And then there’s the race itself, at 1000kms. We’ve got these high-performance race cars that we are absolutely ringing the neck for six and a half hours, driving over 1,000kms to get to the finish. It’s a very hard race to win and a very easy race to lose. Triple Eight Race Engineering is very proud of the fact that we’ve won 50% of the times we’ve taken up the challenge. We’ve won ten out of 20. And we want to make sure we keep that record up.”

The next race on the agenda for the Triple Eight Race Engineering team is the Adelaide 500, which really is the grand final, the final race for the year. Although at the time of writing, the race is yet to be run, AMTIL wishes them all the best. This is the Team Championship. The Driver’s Championship. And it is also the Manufacturing Engineer’s Championship.

 

 

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