Erebus Motorsport is still treating its ZB Commodores the same as it did the VFs which it finished 2017 with.
The small Holden squad sports cars for David Reynolds, who is just 11 points shy of the championship lead, and Anton De Pasquale, who is vying for the status of leading rookie in 19th on the ladder.
Erebus has transitioned to the ZB shape like all other Holden teams, with one brand-new chassis and another converted from VF specification.
While the change means running a five-door hatchback shape as opposed to four-door sedan, team manager Barry Ryan says that the team still hasn’t changed its approach to setting up its cars or made any dramatic shifts in its development program.
“We’re just focused on where we finished off last year, we’re just continuing on from there,” Ryan told Speedcafe.com.
“We’re still pretty much ignoring that it’s a ZB.
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“For us it doesn’t really handle any different, it doesn’t feel any different to the old car so we’re just continuing on.
“If there’s something slightly different with the rear wing with how it works, well we’ll try learning that, but we haven’t found anything that stands out yet.
“We were always trying to put new things on the car and just tidy up things even if they’re not performance just to make them more reliable.
“We’re definitely not standing still.”
Ryan also said that Erebus is now at a point where it is comfortable with producing a race set-up and a qualifying set-up.
“I suppose we’ve done a really good job in the last I’ll say six months in establishing what we know we need to do to get a race set-up compared to a qualifying set-up,” he said.
“We’re reasonably confident now we can produce a qualifying car and put the main changes in that will consistently work now to make it a race car.”
Despite the positive signs, Ryan still laments not having taken even greater advantage of championship leader Shane van Gisbergen’s issues on the Sunday at Symmons Plains.
Reynolds finished that race in eighth, picking up 90 championship points.
Had the Penrite Commodore taken the chequered flag two positions higher, the 102-point haul would have put him on top of the table by a single point, a first for team or driver in the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship.
“We’re kicking ourselves a bit,” Ryan conceded.
“If we’d finished just two spots up on Sunday we’d have been leading the championship, and that’s a good thing to walk away with.
“But can’t complain on leaving second in the class. Just go off and move on.”
The Supercars Championship resumes this weekend with the WD-40 Phillip Island 500 starting on Friday.
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