Penske team uses Coulthard as ‘Sacrificial Lamb’ to help McLaughlin

Penske Sacrificial Lamb' Fabian Coulthard

Shane van Gisbergen says the Penske Supercar team uses Fabian Coulthard to a ‘sacrificial lamb’ after the DJR Team Penske driver was penalized for slowing excessively under Safety Car in the Bathurst 1000.

Coulthard was running third, one position behind his ultimately victorious Shell V-Power Racing teammate Scott McLaughlin, when a Safety Car was called on Lap 135.

By slowing so much that he gave up well over 40 seconds to McLaughlin, who was chasing leader Jamie Whincup to the pits, Coulthard avoided having to stack behind Car #17 in the DJRTP pit bay.

Coulthard was soon issued a drive-through penalty for a breach of Safety Car procedure which saw him drop from 10th at the time of the restart to 14th.

“I don’t want to say anything, but it’s pretty obvious what happened," said van Gisbergen when asked for his thoughts on the incident.

“Probably still we would have had to fight it out with Jamie and Scotty, which would have been awesome, and we would have had to (have) been closer.

“We were stuck behind so many more cars, so much more traffic, but it is what it is.

“That car’s been a sacrificial lamb all year, so deal with it."

Fabian Coulthard and his bosses have dismissed suggestions that he acted improperly.

However, Coulthard still dropped to 10th anyway, behind nine cars which also pitted under that Safety Car, after his crew performed extra work which included raising the bonnet of Car #12.

He claimed that a race-long overheating issue, and uncertainty as to where the incident was, was the reason for the slowdown.

“I was told on the radio that I needed to take extreme caution," Coulthard told Speedcafe.com.

“My engineer at the time didn’t know where the incident was (and) I had an overheating drama which I was battling with as well.

“But just to slow down and things like that, I was told to by my team."

Roger Penske also batted away a suggestion that Car #12 had been sacrificed to maximise the team’s chances of winning the race.

“I’m not sure that made the difference of who’s going to win the race," he said.

“For me, we can look at it and talk about it but it’s secondary as far as I’m concerned when you think about what happened at the end.

“Everybody had a chance. When that was all over, the two top guys up there had a chance to duel there at the end.

“The outcome was obviously what we wanted." Speedcafe