Gen3 Supercar parts supply a ‘major concern’

Production and supply of parts for Supercars’ new Gen3 cars remains a “major concern”, according to Erebus Motorsport CEO Barry Ryan.

The Gen3 ruleset is set to debut in competition next year, after two delays and, briefly, even thoughts that at least aspects of it might be brought forward to 2021 following General Motors’ decision to close Holden.

While development has been drawn out, there have been encouraging signs of late, with Triple Eight Race Engineering ahead on construction of a total of eight chassis for itself and customers, and PACE making its first delivery to a non-homologation team at this month’s Sandown event.

Erebus, one of the other two chassis builders, has just finished off its first as well, while the General Motors and Ford engines which have powered the prototype vehicles are now on their way to the United States for durability testing, where they will have up to 10,000km put on them.

Still, timelines are still far from comfortable, at least as far as Ryan is concerned.

Testing is not set to commence until each team has at least one car, and current chassis completion rates put that time at some point in December.

However, that would also rely on parts being signed off promptly enough such that they are available and/or there is time to make them.

Asked if having one car by December worked for him, Ryan told Speedcafe.com, “Not really, because Triple Eight have got four already.

“It works, because we haven’t got the parts yet to put them together anyway, so it doesn’t really make a difference.

“The biggest thing now is getting the rest of the parts; the chassis is going to end up being the easiest part at the moment because we can control that to a point.

“The rest of our parts, it’s out of control.

“That’s probably my major concern at the moment, is the 200 or so parts that aren’t released yet that we’ve got to either buy or make.”

The 2023 Repco Supercars Championship is set to get underway on the streets of Newcastle on March 10-12, and Ryan is predicting plenty of hard work for crews before then.

“There’s no deadline now, the only deadline is March next year when we go to Newcastle,” he remarked.

“That’s the only end I can see. As long as we hit that date, the rest is work, we’ve just got to suck it up.

“Hopefully we can do it a bit earlier and get some testing.”