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TEAMS MAY NOT TEST GEN3 UNTIL APRIL

Teams may not test Gen3 until April - Image: Supplied

By Bruce Newton

A limited supply of spares such as wheels and brakes means teams may not be testing their new Gen3 Supercars until March or April 2022.

The racing debut of the new Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro Supercars is currently planned for August 2022 at the annual Sydney Motorsport Park night race.

Supercars intends to have its own prototypes built by homologation teams Triple Eight Race Engineering (Chevrolet Camaro) DJR (Ford Mustang) out and testing by the end of August this year.

Gen3 had been scheduled for the start of 2022 but was pushed back to mid-season because of delays to the program caused by the COVID pandemic.

Commercial requirements appear to be the driving force behind the unprecedented wholesale changeover of the entire grid mid-championship.

Some teams have already started on the Gen3 construction process, while others are yet to act. Tickford Racing plans to have four Mustang chassis in its workshop by October while Kelly Grove racing has ordered two complete Mustang chassis from Pace Innovations (see separate story).

Some teams such as Matt Stone Racing and the Blanchard Racing Team have yet to decide which brand of car they will race.

Publicly committed to the Chev Camaro are Triple Eight, Erebus Motorsport, Team 18 and WAU. DJR, Tickford and KGR are publicly committed to the Mustang.

Supercars head of motorsport Adrian Burgess confirmed the Gen3 steering group had a proposal on team testing in front of it, but made it clear there was a long way to go before the process was finalised.

“We are unlikely to start testing with teams’ cars until March or April next year,” Burgess confirmed. “That’s partly because we have a quantity of wheels and brakes coming to run the prototypes on, but it’s different story to have enough wheels and brakes and some of those consumable items ready to run a whole series.

“The production lead times are fairly long on those components so we don’t anticipate probably running team cars until maybe April.”
Supercars will allocate teams additional Gen3-specific test days in the months leading up to the racing debut, but the formats of those days is yet to be decided.

“There’s two ways of doing it,” explained Burgess. “You either give them a quantity of test days and a quantity of tyres and you let them go and do what they choose. Or we go the other route and organise some sort of category test days and have everyone there together.

“It just saves on economies of scale and having the right people at the right place at the right time.

“We haven’t delved down into the details yet but it will be something along those lines.”

The good news for teams is they will still have some on-track experience of Gen3 ahead of their own testing programs. They will be invited to attend prototype testing, have access to data and their drivers will be able to get behind the wheel.

“When we are into more detailed and specific testing when we want driver feedback from current drivers, then we will sweep the paddock and we will use a variety of drivers.

“It is not going to be left to drivers from the homologation teams, we will use drivers from across the paddock to get a broad spectrum of feedback.”

Burgess played down the possibility of dedicated Gen3 team test time at rounds in the first half of the 2022 season, an idea that has been circulating in the Supercars paddock.

“Don’t underestimate the resource required to run an extra car at a race event is something the teams aren’t geared up for at the moment,” he said. “It’s probably an unnecessary strain.”

However, Supercars fans will still get to see the Gen3 cars at events, Burgess said.

“I’m sure we’ll be taking the prototypes to a majority if not all the events next year as a bit of a road show, but equally as a mechanism for Supercars to continue the testing, data gathering and validation of the cars.

“We also plan on running the cars at events in the tail-end of this year.”

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