V8 Supercars has released its pit lane order for the 2016 season, revealing Prodrive Racing Australia has split its main drivers Mark Winterbottom and Chaz Mostert across two separate garages.
With pit lane order determined by the previous year’s Teams’ Championship results and factoring in teams with multiple cars or single car entries, Red Bull Racing Australia retain the number one garage while its third TeamVortex car will share a pit-boom with customer team TEKNO Autosports in the second garage.
Prodrive Racing Australia will occupy the third and fourth garages, but have opted to race Chaz Mostert under the #55 Rod Nash Racing licence out of the fourth garage sharing a boom with Super Black Racing’s Chris Pither, while Winterbottom will be based in the third garage alongside the soon-to-be announced fourth driver (expected to be Cam Waters).
The split is reportedly due to commercial reasons, but with Winterbottom and Mostert no longer needing to share a pit-boom, it should prevent the squad having to double stack its two star drivers during pit-stops.
Charlie Schwerkolt’s new single-car Team 18 entry in the hands of Lee Holdsworth and the third Brad Jones Racing entry of Tim Blanchard are the only other teams set to share a garage and pit-boom.
V8 Supercars 2016 Pit Lane Order - Pit-Exit to Pit-Entry
| Garage | Car | Team | Driver |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 88 | Triple Eight Race Engineering | Jamie Whincup |
| 97 | Triple Eight Race Engineering | Shane van Gisbergen | |
| 2 | 888 | Triple Eight Race Engineering | Craig Lowndes |
| 19 | TEKNO Autosports | Will Davison | |
| 3 | 1 | Prodrive Racing Australia | Mark Winterbottom |
| 6 | Prodrive Racing Australia | TBA | |
| 4 | 55 | Rod Nash Racing | Chaz Mostert |
| 111 | Super Black Racing | Chris Pither | |
| 5 | 2 | Walkinshaw Performance | Garth Tander |
| 22 | Walkinshaw Performance | James Courtney | |
| 6 | 8 | Brad Jones Racing | Jason Bright |
| 14 | Brad Jones Racing | Tim Slade | |
| 7 | 21 | Brad Jones Racing | Tim Blanchard |
| 18 | Team 18 | Lee Holdsworth | |
| 8 | 7 | Nissan Motorsport | Todd Kelly |
| 15 | Nissan Motorsport | Rick Kelly | |
| 9 | 23 | Nissan Motorsport | Michael Caruso |
| 96 | Nissan Motorsport | Dale Wood | |
| 10 | 33 | Volvo Polestar Racing | Scott McLaughlin |
| 34 | Volvo Polestar Racing | James Moffat | |
| 11 | 12 | DJR Team Penske | Fabian Coulthard |
| 17 | DJR Team Penske | Scott Pye | |
| 12 | 222 | Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport | Nick Percat |
| 3 | Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport | TBA | |
| 13 | 9 | Erebus Motorsport | David Reynolds |
| 4 | Erebus Motorsport | Aaren Russell |
