Two cars will have the 890cc inline three cylinder, fuel injected engine. Drivers will be able to back-to-back test against the current aging four cylinder XJR1300 powerplant.
Josh Thomas drove a car equipped with the MT-09 unit as a development exercise at the BP Adelaide Grand Final last year. The opportunity to move to the new engine has already been well-received by several teams.
The test day will be on February 5 at Sydney Motorsport Park.
“We’re going to have two MT-09 test cars there that we’ve done a lot of work over the Christmas break,” said category owner Brett Thomas.
“The work continues with all the changeover componentry to make sure it is simple to fit into the Aussie car. There won’t be any welded parts, everything is bolt on.
“We’ve made some special fittings for the front of the MT-09, just to make sure that the engines run cooler, which will fit the normal oil coolers. What we’ve done is try to make it so there’s as little change possible to the current engine.
Thomas added that bringing all the competitors to Sydney will allow input as a collective group. He says they can all do five or six laps, talk about the engine, what are the positive and minus factors, and the cost of the changeover kits.
“We’re been talking about doing that with Motorsport Australia as well, and through David Stewart, MA’s General Manager, Motorsport Operations who has been very supportive through this whole process. They support the new introduction of the MT-09 because obviously, we’re currently running an engine that is 30 years old,” Thomas added.
“Nobody that has an XJR or an MT-09 will be disadvantaged. I think the XJR will be slightly stronger, but not a lot. I don’t think we’re going to have to do a lot to it to make it the same speed as MT-09.
“Competitors build their own XJR engines and that will still be the case if some choose to do that. But there’ll be a lot higher compliance checks there won’t be a time frame that they have to stop running them.
“A lot are sitting and waiting and that was part of the reason to invite them to drive the cars. They’re telling us, they want parity, which the MT-09 gives them, and they want reliability, which the MT-09 gives them as well.
In the Legend Cars, which uses identical MT-09s, Thomas has been told they’re getting up to four years out of an engine with a head gasket change every 12 months as a preventative measure. He believes the cost of an MT-09 rebuild is in the vicinity of $8,000 while with the XJR, some are spending 15-20 grand.
“The difference with the MT-09 is new parts are readily available. It’s a brand new current spec Yamaha engine. It’s supplied exclusively to us from overseas through Legend Cars USA, so they’re all identical.
“They’re all sealed when they come and we’ll be taking the MT-09 engine program in-house. If you want to buy an engine at a racetrack, competitors won’t have to carry a spare engine anymore. Just come up to the truck and just pick an engine, we’ll give you the dyno sheet for it and go through it all.
“What came out the Adelaide run was that couple of the guys who are running multiple cars for multiple customers want to go to the MT-09 straight away.”
Thomas also pointed out that the MT-09 engine wasn’t touched with a spanner in Adelaide and that there had been several XJR failures throughout last season. He doesn’t want track delays to his category or any other because of engine dramas.
As part of the introduction of the new engine rollout, there will be new AIM Data Loggers that can be quickly accessed by plugin or Bluetooth. The discussions with MA also included other matters with the general rules including dropping a points allocation for race non-finishers and to do away with the high speed aero kits.
Thomas says there are 15 at least that will take in the test day, including recent category champions whose input will be particularly valuable.
“The test day will give everyone time to evaluate and decide on which way they want to go ahead of the first round which isn’t until Easter,” Thomas concluded.
The race season kicks off as a support to the Bathurst 6 Hour on April 3-5. Round 2 is at the Tasmanian Super 440 (May 22-24) and followed by the NTI Townsville 500 (July 10-12), Ipswich Super 440 (August 21-23), the Airtouch 500 (September 11-13) and the Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500 (October 23-25). The seventh and final round is a TBA although Speedcafe understands the category is looking to join Trans Am at Phillip Island, sometime in November.
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