A new drop gear ratio could well see the Gen3 Supercars reaching 300km/h at the Bathurst 1000, according to Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Mark Dutton.
Supercars has mandated a taller drop gear across the field for this year’s Great Race in order to prevent engines from sitting on the rev limiter for an excessive period of time at the end of Conrod Straight.
While the move to a 0.909 final drive ratio instead of the 0.931 is motivated by protecting the equipment, it does create the potential for a small uplift in top speeds and cars to thus once again reach the magical 300.
“They could well be,” Dutton, Team Manager at Red Bull Ampol Racing, told Speedcafe.
“Like anything, you don’t want to put your house on that because then you turn up and there’s a massive headwind and you lose your house!
“So, there are some environmental conditions that do still play a part, but it definitely could be a possibility.
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“That’ll be pretty exciting.”
The last time Supercars made the drop gear taller, back in 2015, the 300km/h figure remained elusive.
Such a change does increase wheel speed for a given amount of revs, but with the trade-off of slower acceleration than otherwise would be the case.
Even so, Dutton says there is reason to be confident that top speeds will rise, although a trickier entry to The Chase complex could rein drivers in.
“Remember, the cars are lighter, we still have good grunt, we’ve got less drag, and the mid-corner and exit speed of Forrest’s Elbow [the corner preceding Conrod Straight] doesn’t have a huge effect with aero,” he explained.
“So, you could be you could be exiting at a similar speed – or even if it’s a slightly slower speed, it shouldn’t be massive amounts – so you could get some really good top speeds there.
“Then it’s just [a matter of] what you go through the kink at because you don’t have the downforce.
“That’s where that’ll be quite possibly a different story, and then once you’re braking into The Chase as well. Those are the big things we’ve got to see.”
Supercars has long controlled drop gear ratios, with the same applying to the Mustang and Camaro (or Commodore, in the Car of the Future era) at any given track.
With new engines introduced as part of Gen3, however, it also stipulated back-up ratios for teams to bring to each track, in case a change was deemed necessary.
In the Bathurst case, the need to go taller was determined even before the field arrived, as it was for at Symmons Plains and as it has been for next weekend’s Penrite Oil Sandown 500, where cars will run with the 1.000 ratio rather than the 1.042 which was used last year.
In recent days, an arguably more significant rule change has been announced, namely that there will be no compulsory pit stops at the enduros (save for a brake pad change at Mount Panorama).
Practice at Sandown starts on Friday, while the Bathurst 1000 ‘weekend’ runs from October 5-8.
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