The Gen3 Supercars should need no more mechanical sympathy than has been the case in past Sandown 500 races, according to Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Mark Dutton.
This weekend’s first enduro of the Gen3 era will not just be a test of machinery because of sheer distance but also because of the nature of Sandown International Motor Raceway.
The suburban Melbourne venue features a particularly brutal complex of corners at Turn 2/Turn 3, where drivers ride some very high kerbs, and a popular opinion within the paddock is that the Gen3 Supercars are not as robust as those of the Car of the Future era.
Dutton, however, told Speedcafe, “Look, so far, they’ve had a really good life, these cars, at your Townsvilles [pictured above] and things like that where there are big kerbs [and] they’re getting a hard life.
“Yes, it’s not a 500km race so there’s a difference there but so far, touch wood, things have been lasting pretty well.
“[Drivers] still they still have to be careful. You hit these kerbs hard enough with these cars, you bend rims. You used to bend them with the old car and, funnily enough, you bend them with the new car.
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“So, it still needs some mechanical sympathy over the course of an endurance race, but it doesn’t appear to be any more than previous years.”
Steering racks are an obvious question after a spate of failures earlier this year and testing by Triple Eight, the Chevrolet homologation team and one of the driving forces of the Gen3 project, both after The Bend event and last Monday week.
Similarly, though, Dutton is not particular concerned about racks.
“No; we haven’t been chasing durability as such with the racks,” he explained.
“It’s been feel and other issues that we’ve been chasing.”
There will be no changes to the spec for Sandown, and there is no desire to throw everything out given the hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of racks up and down pit lane.
Instead, as was the case with the Ford aerodynamic testing, the work which Triple Eight undertook was done so with a view to the longer term.
“Supercars have worked with JJ [Jeromy Moore, Triple Eight Technical Director] to come up with a testing regime of stuff,” said Dutton.
“This isn’t for Sandown [or] Bathurst; this is this is more looking towards the future and what’s going to be best for the category.
“It’d be great to have something before 2024 but, realistically not sure if that will be the case.
“But, you have to start the process early enough on because this is it’s not the old days where you do this stuff, test for yourself, and then it’s easy to roll out.
“Because this is category work, you need to be able to give everybody enough lead time to do some mods, upgrades… whatever ends up being the resolution.”
Practice 1 starts on Friday at 10:45 local time/AEST.
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