Garry Rogers remains confident that his team’s first Volvo S60 V8 Supercar will be ready for track testing next month.
Construction of the team’s new chassis, complete with Volvo bodywork, is said to be on schedule for completion by the end of November.
Development of the B8444S Yamaha-based V8 is continuing at Polestar headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden; the speed of which will ultimately determine the maiden test date.
Work on the ancillaries and the exhaust system are being performed at the GRM team headquarters in Melbourne as the team waits for the arrival of its first engine.
“Volvo Polestar seem to be on top of it and all is going along quite well,” Rogers assured Speedcafe.com of the engine’s development.
The project to develop the powerplant is being overseen by Derek Crabb, the vice-president of powertrain and executive director of Volvo Motorsport.
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The racing program utilises existing stocks of the B8444S blocks, which have been out-of-production for several years.
“Derek understands it,” continued Rogers.
“He’s a racing person and he knows how it works. We are confident that it will be done and when it is done it will be done properly.”
Although new-for-2013 players Nissan and Erebus-AMG have expressed a desire for key changes to areas such as the compression ratio for four-valve engines, Polestar is confident that it can produce a competitive unit within the existing regulations.
The only fundamental difference for Polestar’s engine is its 60 degree bank angle, for which the company required special dispensation from V8 Supercars.
The V8 that was initially used in Volvo’s large size four-wheel-drive XC90, was configured at a sharper, taller angle to accommodate the company’s safety and packaging requirements.
“We thought it would be a massive issue to be honest from previous experiences,” noted Crabb while in Australia last month.
“We sat down with our experts and they put their experts up pretty quickly and it was sensible.”
“It doesn’t have a lot of impact on pure power but it does have an impact on how the airflow works with the engine. They accepted those conditions and we were fully transparent to them.”
The team meanwhile ran a test day with Scott McLaughlin’s Commodore at Winton on Tuesday following the reoccurring misfire the car suffered at the recent Armor All Gold Coast 600.
The car ran trouble-free throughout the day, leaving the team to hope the mysterious issue does not return at Phillip Island later this month.
