Drivers will still have to pit twice in each race and, with 200km being the journey in both tomorrow’s and Sunday’s encounters, that means taking on fuel at some point (probably across both stops, given dwell time for tyre changes anyway).
However, the requirement to drop an aggregate of 80 litres of fuel in one’s car over the course of the race has now itself been dropped, although as yet only for Taupo.
This weekend’s event is the first since the Australian Grand Prix, where, given Formula 2 was handed the secondary pit lane garages, Supercars reverted to compulsory pit stop-free races and so happened to put on some of its most entertaining encounters in recent memory.
Grove, the CEO at Penrite Racing, is not convinced specifically that removing the fuel drop will lead to big strategic differences up and down the Taupo pit lane but is happy to try such ideas.
“I think the strategy is going to be very similar,” he said.
“At the end of the day, time in the lane is the slowest way there, so everyone’s going to be minimising as much as they can.
“I’d be surprised if there’s much variation but let’s see; it could be great for the racing.
“We saw that no pit stops at the Australian Grand Prix was really, really good for the racing so I think credit to Supercars for trying different things.
“There was probably a bit of flack from Shane [van Gisbergen, presumably] and other people over the last couple of years that things are a bit stale, but Supercars have taken that onboard and looking to try stuff.
“So, I think at the moment, it’s only for this round – we’ll see what happens moving forward – but, the more things we can do to make the racing better, the more we support.”
Matt Stone, whose eponymous team won the most recent race of the Repco Supercars Championship, supports the removal of the fuel drop, which he thinks will create jeopardy for the whole crew.
“It’s an interesting move,” he said.
“I think it’s good because it puts more power on the teams to make a strategy or potentially mess it up.
“It puts more pressure on pit lane because you no longer have a stopwatch saying ‘You must be here for this long’ in terms of the fuel drop; it’s now down to how quickly your guys can change the tyres, plug the fuel in, and much more emphasis on the engineering team being accurate with their fuel burn because that’s all time in pit lane.
“So, I think it allows the teams to race harder off the track in terms of with the pit crew and the engineering team, and puts more emphasis on that than fuel drop does.
“I think it’s a good element to the to the race weekend, puts more pressure on the teams, makes it more competitive, and should hopefully make racing better.”
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