Racer-turned-analyst Mark Larkham believes the current parity trigger in Supercars is too antiquated for the current cars.
As it stands there are two key pillars to the Supercars parity system, one relating to time lap time over a condensed average lap, the other being how many times that threshold is triggered.
In rough terms the threshold is 0.1 seconds over the 60 seconds, that threshold then needing to be triggered either five times in row, or five times in the span of eight races.
Larkham – who will be part of the broadcast of the Vailo Adelaide 500 on both Fox Sports and the Seven Network – believes the system needs an overhaul to suit the new Gen3 rules.
The move to the Gen3 platform has placed a higher premium than ever on parity, with teams largely unable to engineer their way out of deficit given the lack of technical freedom.
Speaking to Mark Fogarty on the latest Speedcafe Podcast, Larkham called for both the threshold to be dropped, and the amount of triggers required reduced.
“I’ve had a couple of internal chats, and I’m not in a position of any decision making, I just try and get in people’s ear where I can,” he said.
“I was there on the board 20 years ago when we wrote the parity model that we currently use, where you grab a bunch of the leading cars on one side, and then the other side, and then dissect all that down to a 60-second lap and remove all the outliers and the in laps and the out laps and all the rest of it.
“You get a really accurate picture, when you average all that out, of the true performance of a Camaro versus a Mustang in genuine racing circumstances. Because at the end of the day, that’s what really matters.
“But because that [trigger] is a tenth of a second in 60 seconds, that was designed for an era where the cars were completely different. The cars, for the last 25 years, haven’t been even remotely this [close] – well they’ve been close, but nothing like they are now.
“So a tenth of a second in 60 seconds is plenty to capture a difference in parity.
“I think we probably need to have a bit of a look at that. If it was me I’d be saying you probably need to halve that so you capture any parity differences sooner.
“And I’d love to see them… I mean five races is a long time to wait to trigger it; maybe there’s something that can be be looked at there. That’s just part of a holistic approach to it, to really arrow in and if there is any small differences they can be jumped on and you barely even see them.
“That’s the point in our game when it’s so close, they’re really tiny things. And we just want to get this back to the entire focus is on the team, the strategy, the drivers, the pit stops, doing it right.”
Listen to the full chat with Larkham on the latest episode of the Speedcafe Podcast.
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