Triple Eight Race Engineering has officially prohibited the use of Meta smart glasses in their garage area during Supercars events, as a preventive measure against alleged industrial espionage. The ban is enforced through signage at the paddock-side entry of their garage at The Bend, explicitly banning the wearable device due to its photo and video recording capabilities.
Team boss Jamie Whincup stated that the policy is a direct response to spying claims circulating in the paddock. He cited anecdotal evidence suggesting that content captured on Meta by guests during pit tours has been distributed to rival teams. Pit tours are a daily occurrence at Supercars events, where VIP guests and sponsors are given guided access to the garage and cars.
“We heard some pretty bad stories of people walking through garages filming,” Whincup told Speedcafe. “People who know what to look for. I think team people are sending punters into garages just to basically spy. We don’t want that. We want to bring people in the garage for the experience, but it’s a bit sad that people are taking advantage of that and trying to spy. There’s no doubt that’s happened a couple of times in the last six months, so we’re just trying to protect ourselves from that. We’ve heard of incidents and it absolutely makes sense.”
Whincup clarified that Triple Eight has not yet been a victim of such espionage, and the Meta glasses ban is purely proactive. “We’re reacting before it happens to us; we don’t believe it’s happened to us, but we’re reacting before it does,” he said. “As Warren Buffett says it’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes. We’ve heard of some situations and we want to be preventative.”
This is not the first time espionage has been a hot topic in the Supercars paddock this year. In February, Brodie Kostecki was filmed looking underneath a Walkinshaw Toyota Supra and a Triple Eight Ford Mustang at the Supercars season launch in Sydney. The footage was captured by Triple Eight driver Will Brown and posted to social media as a light-hearted joke, with both Kostecki and Brown claiming it was a prank.
However, Triple Eight did not see the funny side. Team manager Mark Dutton even called for Kostecki to be sidelined for the opening round at Sydney Motorsport Park. “In motorsport, stealing IP is worse than drug cheating,” Dutton told Speedcafe at the time. “My opinion is it’s a suspension from driving. It’s worse than drug cheating, and what do drug cheats get? Suspension.”
Motorsport Australia stewards were consulted on Kostecki’s alleged spying but no action was taken. Triple Eight’s ban on Meta glasses underscores the team’s seriousness in protecting their intellectual property, especially with the growing sophistication of wearable technology that can be easily misused. Although there is no concrete evidence that espionage has directly harmed Triple Eight, this preventive step highlights the team’s commitment to safeguarding technical data in the digital age.
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