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The first season of Gen3 competition, in 2023, began with a rush simply to build race cars in time for the first event of the year.
There was but a single mechanical-related DNF at that Newcastle 500, it soon became apparent that ongoing improvements would be needed in order to improve the reliability and durability of the new breed of Supercar.
While steering racks were under the spotlight at various times during 2023, with Brad Jones Racing evaluating an upgrade of the existing Sportech unit on Supercars’ behalf in a post-season outing at Winton, wheel bearings were also a pain point.
The aforementioned mechanical DNF at Newcastle was in fact due to a wheel bearing issue for the Walkinshaw Andretti United Ford Mustang driven by Nick Percat, and one theory put to Speedcafe was that the Gen3 bearings were undersized for purpose.
Whatever the case may be, there will be a change for 2024, as revealed in BJR’s end-of-season tech video.
Team owner Brad Jones explained, “We’re making front uprights, and the reason we’re doing that is, we’re changing from the bearing that’s in them to a tapered roller bearing for next year.”
For most teams, BJR included, the 2023/24 off-season represents welcome downtime after the mammoth workload to build cars in a matter of weeks, last January and February.
The Albury-based squad is also moving to making its own front clips for its four Camaros
“This is a little bit exciting; we’ve got a new bench from Hare & Forbes [and] we’re going to start making our own clips,” added Jones.
“So, with the help of Erebus, we’ve got all the jigging we need, so we’re putting it all together.
“We’re a company that normally makes our own chassis but we got PACE [in 2023], but we’re going to start manufacturing bits and pieces.”
Teams will conduct pre-season testing in early-February, with BJR among those heading to Winton.
VIDEO: What BJR looks like over the break
