Walkinshaw TWG Racing considered taking legal action against Jamie Whincup over accusations the team’s two Toyota Supra entries are illegal.
Whincup added the latest chapter to the years-long feud between the Triple Eight and Walkinshaw squads when he claimed on the Apex Hunters United podcast that the team had used an illegal welding technique to build its chassis.
The regulations require chassis manufacturers to use metal inert gas (MIG) welding rather than stronger but more complex tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding, but Whincup has accused Walkinshaw of flouting the rules in a bid to gain a performance-enhancing exemption from Supercars.
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“The rules clearly state you cannot TIG weld the chassis,” he said ahead of the Australian Grand Prix earlier this month. “Walkinshaw have TIG welded both their chassis. Supercars go, ‘What are we going to do here? If you just MIG over the top, it’s going to be okay’.
“Then Supercars issued a letter to say, ‘We’re going to allow these two cars indefinitely, but nobody else can do what they did. From here on in, you’ve all got to MIG-weld’. It’s out of control.
“I think they strategically made the error hoping Supercars will just go, ‘Don’t worry about it’, which they did, so they’re probably laughing all the way to the bank.”
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Walkinshaw CEO Ryan Walkinshaw immediately refuted the accusation, claiming Whincup has confused a similar incident from 2023 during the sport’s transition to the Gen3 regulations.
“Supercars told us we could weld the cars in that way then changed their minds after the chassis were built a few months later [in 2023],” he wrote on social media.
“It wasn’t an advantage as he claims, it was a disadvantage as we had to re-weld them adding more weight.
“Those chassis have been retired years ago.
“Jamie, as usual, is chatting nonsense.”
The controversy appeared to fade, and no protests were lodged against the Walkinshaw cars in Melbourne, but MotorRacing 360 panellist James Phelps has revealed the Walkinshaw team was contemplating talking Triple Eight to court.
“There was talk of legal action with what Jamie said,” he said on this week’s edition of MotorRacing 360. “I can tell you Ryan Walkinshaw or the organisation had a look at it, because those claims weren’t true.
“It didn’t go there because there was no actual word ‘cheat’, so there was no defamation.
“That’s how serious this stuff can get. I don’t like seeing it go that way, because I think it’s a great rivalry, a great feud.”
Despite the similarities to the 2023 incident, subsequent reporting has revealed there is in fact an ongoing dispute over the sport’s regulations, with Supercars having issued a clarification to the welding rules late last year, as Walkinshaw prepared its first Toyota Supra chassis.
According to V8 Sleuth, that communication allowed for MIG welding to be made over the top of TIG welds, which appears to be the source of Whincup’s complaint.
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The claim and counterclaim follow hot on the heels of last year’s championship controversy at the Adelaide Grand Final, where Chaz Mostert won the title after Broc Feeney was tipped into a spin on the first lap by Ryan Wood in the sister Walkinshaw car.
The incident sent Feeney to the back of the field and earned Wood a hefty penalty. Feeney’s comeback drive was subsequently hampered by an engine problem, ensuring Mostert walked away with the sport’s biggest prize.
Ryan Walkinshaw’s immediate reaction to the Feeney-Wood incident was celebration, which some said was unsporting or, worse, evidence the crash had been premeditated.
Speaking to the Lucky Dogs podcast earlier this year, Walkinshaw denied anything untoward in his “emotional” reaction.
“The other part of the conspiracy was that my reaction was some sort of demonstration of some sort of plan being actioned perfectly, and some sort of evil genius managing to get his way,” he said.
“I reacted by cheering my arse off when that happened, because, very, very simply, we just witnessed what looked like the main guy we were competing in the championship screwing up by squeezing unnecessarily into our driver and spinning himself over the front of our car, and both of our cars going through that incident and surviving.
“So of course I’m going to bloody cheer. It looked like Broc [screwed] up and both of our cars managed to go through clean, and now we’re leading the championship. Why would I not cheer for that? Hundreds of thousands of our fans at home cheered for the same reason.
“Guys cheer in the pits all the time. It’s completely normal.
“I’d do it again a hundred times over.”
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The animosity is deep, however. Feeney still hasn’t spoken to Wood about the incident, and he has refused to watch the Supercars documentary detailing last year’s inaugural finals campaign, even turning away during a screening of the trailer during a pre-season media event.
Feeney, though, is likely to get the last laugh, at least as far as the 2026 season is concerned.
Though a chaotic Melbourne SuperSprint at the Australian Grand Prix cost him his championship lead, his Triple Eight team appears to have nailed its switch from General Motors to Ford, whereas Walkinshaw taking on Toyota homologation duties has been less smooth, with only one podium for the season so far.
Feeney also looks to have found another gear from the heartbreaking experience of losing what in any other season would have been a dominant championship but for the finals format introduced last year.
“I think he’s driving with a bit more mongrel about him, which is really good,” Supercars legend Mark Skaife told MotorRacing 360. “He’s very Whincup-esque in terms of how he goes about it — you can’t have 19 poles and 14 wins [in a year] and not be a superstar.
“But he wasn’t hard enough with some of the stuff last year. Going with the beard look this year … he’s tougher this season, which I reckon is going to stand him in good stead.”
A decisive result won’t be enough to settle this Supercars feud, however.
The two teams are long-term bitter rivals, with the seminal rift being Holden switching allegiance from Walkinshaw to Triple Eight in 2017.
Walkinshaw had previously been the Holden Racing Team and the iconic Australian auto manufacturer’s flag bearer in the sport.
It took until last year for the team to win another championship and until this year for it to regain coveted homologation status with Toyota.
With Triple Eight switching to Ford to become the blue oval’s homologation squad, the two teams are destined to remain important on-track rivals — with the off-track feud adding critical spice.