Motoring fans across the country got a big dose of “the new” last weekend, with Formula 1 and the IndyCar Series kicking off their respective 2023 seasons. This weekend is the turn to a category much closer to home: the Supercars.
The first round of the Supercars season kicks off this coming Friday in Newcastle with a pair of practice sessions, with qualifying and two big 250km races planned for the weekend. A handful of new faces and a couple of brand new cars make for a fascinating event.
Fascinating? You mean Shane van Gisbergen it is not we will win both races by 10 seconds…
Easy, steady tiger. Van Gisbergen’s incredible success in last year’s series, where he won a record 21 races, including the Bathurst 1000, was both a joy for Kiwi supporters and a point of contention for keyboard warriors and armchair critics. But, it is unlikely to happen again this year.
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Heimgartner was fastest at the recent official Supercars test at Sydney Motorsport Park.
Whenever Supercars launches a new form of car like this year’s new Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang Gen 3, there tends to be a major reset of the pit-lane pecking order. Triple Eight had the fastest cars for a longer run last season, but that won’t necessarily be the case this year.
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The last time Supercars had a major platform change like this was ten years ago in 2013 with the launch of Car of the Future. The series went from having just two different teams and four different drivers winning races in 2012 to eight teams and 13 drivers earning wins.
Are these new cars really that different? They still have four tires and a steering wheel, don’t they?
The changes aren’t what I’d call radical, but they’re wide and varied enough to make this possibly the biggest change to the Supercars hardware since the series introduced “Project Blueprint” early on.
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Shane van Gisbergen and Broc Feeney, pictured with Red Bull Ampol Racing’s new Gen 3 Camaro.
The fundamental recipe is more or less unchanged compared to 2022. The Camaro and Mustang are based on a shared chromoly space frame platform. The Camaro is powered by a 5.7-liter GM V8 and the Mustang by a 5.4-liter Ford V8. No forced induction or hybrid technology in sight.
Where most of the change is located is in aero. The outgoing cars had horrendous “downforce” problems, where the amount of downforce generated by a car was great enough that any car following it closely would have trouble turning or controlling. Ipso facto, that’s why many of the races last year were a bit of a “follow the leader”.
These new cars have 67% less downforce than the last cars, which theoretically means passing and close racing should be more common.
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Auckland’s Matt Payne becomes the third New Zealander on the grid this season.
The other big thing that Supercars has done away with is a lot of the “hard points” that the two cars had to share in every way. So the Mustang on the grill looks a bit like a real Mustang now, and not a bulbous blob of contorted metal like the old Mustang.
They’re also meant to be cheaper to manufacture and rebuild, and easier to access for new manufacturers if they want to join the series. The jury is still very much out on these two points.
Are there a lot of new rookies to follow this year?
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Payne [right]pictured with experienced teammate David Reynolds.
There is, actually. Three drivers start their full-time Supercars careers this weekend; Matthew Payne, Cameron Hill and Declan Fraser.
Payne is a New Zealander who has been pushed hard by Grove Racing for a number of years. If it were up to them, he would have started in the series last year. An extra season in the Super2 feeder series (where he finished third in points) has served him well. He was quick at Bathurst last year and was quicker than team-mate David Reynolds at the official Sydney Supercars test day last month.
Hill and Fraser are also Super2 graduates, replacing Todd Hazelwood at Matt Stone Racing and Jake Kostecki at Tickford Racing respectively.
Where did those boys go?
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BRT’s Todd Hazelwood was the fastest Mustang driver at the Sydney test.
Well, Hazelwood has appeared at Blanchard Racing as a replacement for Tim Slade, who has switched to PremiAir Racing, and Jake Kostecki was quickly replaced after it was confirmed that he had an altercation with another driver on the gala night of the Supercars of the past year. Ouch.
The driver line-ups of Red Bull Ampol Racing, Shell V-Power Racing, Erebus Motorsport, Team 18, Brad Jones Racing and Walkinshaw Andretti United are unchanged, although the latter has swapped its Holden Commodores for a pair of Ford Mustangs .
The Sydney test you mentioned. Did everything go to plan?
Yes!
Really?
No.
Oh! Because?
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The issue of parity is already a hot topic for this season, before the races even start.
So, depending on who you talk to in the Supercars paddock, the Mustang seems to have quite a performance deficit over its Camaro rival. At the end of that day, Camaros locked down the top eight times, with the fastest Mustang more than a second off the pace.
Several Camaro team owners and engineers hurled accusations against the Ford teams, ranging from theories that they had not run new tires that day to accusations of “sandbagging”. Some of Ford’s more outspoken drivers have been quick to shut down that talk, with David Reynolds even claiming the Mustang was a second behind, an eternity in the racing world.
Supercars appears to have sided with the Ford teams, after scheduling a later private test day the following week. According to reports, the Camaro’s downforce has been increased up front. The Mustang could also get a new engine “map.” Whether these changes will ensure “parity” remains to be seen.
Who was fast in that Sydney test? Apart from none of the Fords, anyway.
A Kiwi led most of the race, but it wasn’t Van Gisbergen. Instead, it was Brad Jones Racing’s Andre Heimgartner. He led the session halfway through and then improved further to lead the pack.
Coke Erebus drivers Will Brown and Brodie Kostecki were also super fast, finishing second and third on the day. BJR’s other three entries were fourth through sixth, with van Gisbergen and Mark Winterbottom completing the Camarothon up front.
These times are unlikely to be that relevant. The cars are likely to have all changed between then and now, we don’t know which teams were pushing hard that day and which weren’t, and there aren’t many similarities between Sydney Motorsport Park and Newcastle.
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Coca-Cola’s famous colors swap teams this season, now courtesy of Will Brown’s Erebus Motorsport entries [pictured] and Brodie Kostecki.
Ah, Newcastle, so it’s going to be a crashfest?
This is very possible, absolutely. Supercars have always liked to start championships on hard, no-compromise circuits. Historically, the Adelaide 500 has been the curtain raiser, with Mount Panorama that last year. And Newcastle will be no different.
Introduced in 2017, Newcastle have always produced dramatic runs. The single turn leads drivers into a bumpy, uphill straight before the most obvious passing opportunity on the 2.6km circuit; two shifts The rest of the track is a quick left and right staircase, building towards a final sequence of corners on the rim.
What will make things even trickier for the drivers is that the series hasn’t visited Newcastle since the pre-pandemic era, meaning most drivers are likely to be pretty rusty when it comes to back to the beat
This all sounds very exciting, can’t wait to see the Supercars when they come to New Zealand!
Yes, about this. Supercars has left New Zealand off the calendar this year (boo). Except when Covid-19 travel restrictions prevented the series from coming here, it will be the first time since 2001 that the championship would not have been played on our side of the ditch.
Supercars didn’t necessarily explain why New Zealand was off the table this year, but it’s understood Hampton Downs Motorsport Park (the track that drove talks as Pukekohe’s replacement) was hampered by consent constraints of resources.
oh pity
Yes, too bad.
So when is it?
The first practice will start at 13:00 NZDT on Friday, with the second practice following at 15:30. Qualifying will begin on Saturday at 12:55 p.m., with the first race of the year scheduled for 4:30 p.m. The final race of the weekend will start at 4.25pm on Sunday afternoon.
