The Supercars Gen3 era burst into life in Newcastle with two street races, won by Cam Waters and Shane van Gisbergen respectively.
The weekend offered us a first glimpse of the all-new cars in anger and we want to know, in this week’s Pirtek Poll, did Supercars deliver with Gen3?
It was a difficult build-up to Newcastle with slipping timelines and teams rushing to get their cars ready in time to go testing ahead of the season-opener.
To their credit, reliability was impressively high throughout the weekend and the new machinery stood up to the rigours of the tight, bumpy Newcastle East Street Circuit.
But Gen3 is about more than that. It’s meant to be a step change with regards to the aesthetics and the way the cars go racing.
There’s no doubt the cars look different on track, less bulbous and more aggressive in their silhouette.
They also danced and moved around on the bumps, on traction, and most notably on the brakes.
That seems a product of the new philosophy employed by the category, which has sought to drastically reduce downforce in an attempt to encourage closer racing.
And there was evidence to suggest that has worked, with cars running nose to tail at low- and high-speed throughout the course of both races.
The elephant in the room is the distinct lack of overtaking, though how much of that is Gen3-related and how much is a result of the Newcastle layout is unclear.
Newcastle as a circuit has always been tricky for overtaking, so much so changes were made following its second event in an effort to improve things.
Passing has remained difficult, so reading too much into that right now would be presumptuous.
It is worth noting comments about the tyres, though.
Over the weekend drivers noted that, because of the reduced downforce, the cars worked the tyres harder which resulted in high temperatures.
As a result, it was easy to overheat the tyres, a point which manifested itself with cars being able to run close to one another but having little additional grip with which to launch attacks.
This was also teams’ first taste of the cars, so they will have gleaned a wealth of engineering knowledge across the weekend.
Drivers too were coming to grips with their new steeds, meaning the product we saw across the weekend is unrefined both from a technical and sporting standpoint.
It was, however, a fascinating debut for Supercars’ newest generation and one which created plenty of talking points.
But the real question is, has Supercars Gen3 delivered what you were hoping for, or do you need to see a little more before making that call?
Cast your vote below in this week’s Pirtek Poll.
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