Running a Camaro and a Mustang through a wind tunnel will allow “good decisions” to be made, according to Supercars CEO Shane Howard.
The championship’s boss is one of a number of heavy-hitters who have made the trip to the United States for Supercars’ historic wind tunnel parity testing, with NASCAR gurus also in attendance at Windshear’s North Carolina facility for the exercise.
The aim of the exercise is, of course, to achieve aerodynamic parity between the two Gen3 race cars after a year of controversy and conjecture, and a lopsided set of results in the Chevrolet Camaro’s favour.
While a more thorough VCAT process led to stability on the aero front for the final seasons of the Gen2 era, the need for more rigorous parity testing was exposed by the highly controlled nature of Gen3.
Howard told Supercars’ official website, “Today was really just to identify and really understand what both cars are doing.
“We obviously have conducted the VCAT tests and they’re very good and they give you good information, but they don’t give you information like this.
“The amount of information that you get from here in the session is enormous.
“That allows for good decisions to be made. And I’m confident that they’ll be made tomorrow.”
Howard was left impressed by what the category has at its disposal at Windshear.
“We’ve had a great day today,” he recounted.
“It’s very pleasing to be here and see the level of professionalism that’s coming from everyone that’s involved from Windshear, Dynamic and both Homologation Teams.
“We’ve had two head aerodynamicists from NASCAR here as well, so it’s been a great day.
“Even the guys from Windshear said, you know, we have a lot of people through this tunnel, but it’s your first time and we’re very impressed on how you’ve gone about business, how your teams have gone about business, and the results are very good.
“The one thing that both Perry [Kapper, Dick Johnson Racing/Ford Mustang Gen3 Chief Designer] and JJ [Jeromy Moore, Technical Director at Chevrolet Homologation Team, Triple Eight Race Engineering] have said that the information that they’re getting is absolutely first class.
“Today was really to look at the cars, see what the differences are, and then look how to best balance those cars.
“They’ll have a big day on that tomorrow with both cars, looking at the fine tuning to get them to a point.
“When we leave here on Sunday, the aim is that both HTs [Homologation Teams], Supercars, Dynamic [Supercars’ CFD contractor], all agree that we’ve achieved the best parity and the best outcome for the category.”
“I think we can achieve that.”
Testing continues on Saturday and Sunday (local time), with another two days understood to be available next week if deemed necessary.
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