Steering Wheel

Controversy has already affected three team's preparations for the Hamilton 400 with equipment and personal gear being stolen on route from Melbourne's Avalon Airport to New Zealand.

HSV Dealer Team, Tasman Motorsport and Ford Performance Racing were affected with Rick Kelly's steering wheel, Greg Murphy's two racing helmets and rims for FPR all stolen sometime between leaving the gear at Avalon and arriving at the track.

Tasman Motorsport made the discovery yesterday and quickly made provisions to send a member of the team back to Australia for an overnight round trip to pick up another two helmets for Murphy, who was particularly upset by the theft.

The helmets arrived at the Hamilton track at 8am this morning, just five hours before practice began.

A spokesperson for the team said they are unaware of where the theft took place, but believe it may have been before the equipment had left Australia although nothing has been confirmed at this stage.

HSV Dealer Team's Rick Kelly, who was very critical of the thief, was also confident the incident and loss of the steering wheel would not have an adverse effect on his weekend.

“It is extremely disappointing, Kelly said.

“You can't use that steering wheel for anything else and everyone knows where it is from, so you can't parade around with it either.

“So whoever has got it is obviously not the brightest spark in the world, but what do you do.

“For us it is tough because it has a lot of buttons and positioning things on it that is all information for the driver, so it is not ideal to start the weekend like this but that hasn't really slowed us down at the moment.

A spokesperson for V8 Supercars said that it ensures a full police investigation will be conducted into the thefts and all attempts will be made to track down the stolen items.

“V8 Supercars will also be reviewing, and upgrading where necessary, the security arrangements for the return of the Teams' equipment to Australia next week, as well as all future fly-away events,” the spokesperson said.