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Triple Eight Supercars team trials Formula 1-style steering wheel

Triple Eight has decided not to use a Formula 1-style steering wheel for Supercars' Sandown 500 weekend after trials by Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes in Friday practice

The factory Holden squad debuted the radical-looking wheel this morning with styling that brought it in-line with a DTM car or open-wheel machine.

Whincup and Lowndes both sampled it across the first two sessions, before returning to the conventional unit, and the sister cars of Shane van Gisbergen and Garth Tander ran the standard wheel throughout all three sessions.

While the F1-style wheel will not return this weekend, it is likely to be trialled again in the future.

"We have constantly got new parts," said Whincup. "There's half a dozen new parts on the car most rounds, but one of those this weekend is the steering wheel.

"It's visible, it's always cool to talk about.

"We have been working on it for the last three or four months, I'd say, just trying to get something a little bit nicer, the buttons in a better position.

"Craig had a spin with it this morning so he tested that out; we were a bit worried about not having a bottom and a top whether it would be OK to do the big shuffle.

"[We] might have to test it out again at [Symmons Plains] as well, for the hairpin, but it's definitely a better thing.

"We probably won't run it this weekend but it's good to get some miles on it."

Lowndes added that the wheel is "nice to drive with", but said the challenge was remembering where the buttons were after becoming so used to the standard wheel set-up.

"The hardest thing is, because of your muscle memory of the layout of the old wheel, is knowing which button to press and pressing the right one," added Lowndes.

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