{"id":799387,"date":"2026-07-14T09:03:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T09:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/799387\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T09:03:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T09:03:14","slug":"triple-eight-technical-director-pete-ringwood-on-recent-supercars-struggles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/799387\/","title":{"rendered":"Triple Eight technical director Pete Ringwood on recent Supercars struggles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">THE low-key ace in Triple Eight\u2019s brains trust has shed light on the team\u2019s recent struggles across the Darwin Triple Crown and Townsville 500.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Banyo squad failed to record a podium at either of those events, making for its first six-race run without a top-three finish since 2006.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Behind the faces better known to fans \u2013 i.e. managing director <a href=\"https:\/\/www.v8sleuth.com.au\/stats-driver-1-Jamie-Whincup\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jamie Whincup<\/a>, team manager Mark Dutton, and race engineers Andrew Edwards and Martin Short \u2013 is technical director Pete Ringwood.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ringwood, who joined Triple Eight eight-and-a-half years ago, admitted it has been a \u201chard slog\u201d to extract qualifying performance from the Red Bull Ampol Mustangs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe\u2019ve been talking about toolkit; there\u2019s more for us to understand there,\u201d he told V8 Sleuth.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSometimes the car is super sensitive, other times it\u2019s less sensitive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt\u2019s not that we have just forgotten all of our tools.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe are finding that the sensitivity of the tools is different.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/adelaide-thurs-3-74-of-75-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-242832\"  \/>Pete Ringwood (middle). Pic: Mark Walker<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Ringwood offered praise to their competitors, with Grove Racing and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.v8sleuth.com.au\/stats-driver-250-Dick-Johnson\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dick Johnson<\/a> Racing (on the #17 side of the garage) consistently setting the benchmark.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cA small misstep anywhere and that\u2019s enough to knock you out. That\u2019s not shocking,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou look at all the cars around us, they\u2019re all strong in their own regards.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe often find the strengths and weaknesses of one car might be the same as yours as well, so it\u2019s hard to be different to them to capitalise differently. A lot of cars are trending in the same direction with all the same strengths and weaknesses.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou\u2019re trying to develop your understanding on the sensitivity of tools on old tyres in one practice session. It\u2019s very hard to walk away from that and confidently say \u2018that did this\u2019\u2026 picking through it is best done at the workshop.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As much as Dutton has expressed the reality that pain will come during Triple Eight\u2019s learning of the Ford package, it was clear to see frustration from the usually cheery <a href=\"https:\/\/www.v8sleuth.com.au\/stats-driver-1292-Will-Brown\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Will Brown<\/a> on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe all share it,\u201d Ringwood said of those feelings, given the eternally high standards they\u2019ve set.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are two-and-a-half weeks before Round 8, the Perth Super440, gets underway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THE low-key ace in Triple Eight\u2019s brains trust has shed light on the team\u2019s recent struggles across the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-799387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799387","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=799387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}