The category this week announced that it will hold an extra day of testing at the Windshear facility in the United States, where a Chevrolet Camaro and a Ford Mustang have remained in storage after an initial three days in that wind tunnel in December.
According to Supercars, aerodynamic parity had already been achieved and the extra day was “focused exclusively on enhancing the aesthetics of the modifications made to the Ford Mustang.”
As floated by Speedcafe at the time of that announcement, the work is indeed being undertaken to find a solution for the unsightliness of the gurneys which were tacked onto the Mustang.
While Supercars is yet to publicise detail of a proposed 2024 Vehicle Specification Document (ie bodywork) for the Mustang, a video which it released after the final day of the initial, three-day wind tunnel test showed upright gurneys added to the mounts and endplates of its rear wing (as well as the restoration of a gurney flap to the trailing edge of the wing plane).
Ford and its homologation team, Dick Johnson Racing, are understood to have designed parts which will be fitted to the car on January 12, when the extra day in the wind tunnel is held.
Then, those new parts will be verified and a VSD will be locked in.
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Why the gurneys were added is yet to be advised, although one theory is that they may have been a means of inducing some drag.
The Mustang road car is said to be somewhat less ‘draggy’ than the Camaro due to a slightly smaller frontal area and also the shape of its rear end.
For parity to be achieved between the two cars, they would need to be equal on both downforce and drag.
Hiring the wind tunnel and then sending cars and crew to the USA was a significant investment by Supercars, with championship CEO Shane Howard hailing the initiative given how many more data points can be measured than at a VCAT, and how many more kilometres of running (or the equivalent thereof) can be undertaken.
Pre-season testing for the 2024 campaign takes place in early February at Winton (southern-based teams) and Queensland Raceway (Queensland teams), with the first event of the year being the Thrifty Bathurst 500 on February 23-25.
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