{"id":776026,"date":"2026-07-03T07:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T07:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/776026\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T07:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T07:50:12","slug":"supercars-latest-driver-cooling-rule-change-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/776026\/","title":{"rendered":"Supercars\u2019 latest driver cooling rule change explained"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/2026_Supercars_Rd6_PaceImages_25139-Social.jpg\" alt=\"Supercars\u2019 latest driver cooling mandate explained\"\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBrad Jones Racing&#8217;s Macauley Jones in Darwin. Image: <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.supercheapauto.com.au\/catalogue-out-now\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1036058 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/SCA-1196-Wk1-Cat-BPO-Speedcafe_728x90.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"728\" height=\"90\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Thomas Randle and Brodie Kostecki both suffered heat stress during the Saturday race in Darwin, requiring medical intervention and later withdrawing from Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>Randle had run the race without a working cool suit, again throwing the spotlight on reliability issues with the systems and the consequences of failure.<\/p>\n<p>Although it\u2019s unclear if this happening in Randle\u2019s case, such failures often result in drivers having increasingly warm water in the veins of their cool shirts, exacerbating the initial failure.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSupercars have now mandated for Perth that you have to have a way of bleeding the fluid out of the system,\u201d Jones said in his latest BJR video explaining driver cooling.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat will help. It won\u2019t be heating up the water, and hopefully it\u2019ll allow a bit more air to pass around. But the big thing is the fluid that\u2019s in the plastic pipes won\u2019t overheat.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This idea isn\u2019t unique to Supercars.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>NASCAR star Tyler Reddick was seen purging the water out of his failed cool suit during a race earlier this year at Darlington, which he went on to win.<\/p>\n<p>Reddick used a small pressurised canister which he was able to plug into the system while under yellow flags and bleed it out.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>The new Supercars rule states cooling systems \u201cmust be fitted with a suitable mechanism capable of discharging the fluid from the cool vest if the system fails\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Supercars has meanwhile sent advice to teams since Darwin to help ensure their cooling systems are reliable during races.<\/p>\n<p>The category will black flag cars without working systems, but only if the weather forecast of 32.9 degrees is exceeded on the day and the heat policy is enacted.<\/p>\n<p>Supercars allows various freedoms in its driver cooling rules, with teams split between using traditional dry ice boxes for cool suits and the electric ChillOut.<\/p>\n<p>BJR is among those to use the dry ice method for both the cool suit and helmet fan.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe ChillOut system isn\u2019t as effective as this, it doesn\u2019t work as well. It doesn\u2019t freeze up, but it doesn\u2019t get the driver as cool,\u201d Jones said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had a failure with Cam [Hill] at Darwin, but what we found was the helmet cooling was so effective that, at the end of the race, while he was more worn out than normal, he felt comfortable enough.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m sure he could have driven the car the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Supercars\u2019 latest driver cooling rule tweak is recommended for the upcoming Townsville 500 and mandatory from the following round in Perth.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/speedcafe.com\/supercars-news-2026-darwin-driver-cooling-system-control-mark-dutton-triple-eight-comments-exclusive\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Supercars urged to implement control driver cooling system<\/a><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brad Jones Racing&#8217;s Macauley Jones in Darwin. Image: Thomas Randle and Brodie Kostecki both suffered heat stress during&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776027,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,42144,806,805,803,804,7499,85],"class_list":["post-776026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-brad-jones-racing","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-slot4","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}