The opening day of the Penrite Oil Sandown 500 event was a positive one for the Gen3 Supercars’ much-maligned steering racks.
There has been a spate of steering rack failures so far this year, with the situation being particularly grim in Townsville and then, perhaps surprisingly, at Sydney Motorsport Park.
Townsville has a tough Turn 7/Turn 8 complex and Turn 2/Turn 3 at Sandown bears similarities, but there were no apparent dramas on that front during Friday practice.
“Not too bad [on Friday] for our cars; not sure about the rest of the field,” said Jamie Whincup, Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Team Principal and also one of its co-drivers.
Triple Eight is an even more significant stakeholder in the steering rack saga than the rest of the field given it shouldered so much of the task of designing the Gen3 Supercar.
It has also conducted more testing on that front since the chequered flag flew on the previous event of the season at The Bend, although that is said to have been focused more so on feel than durability.
For now, the existing design remains in cars for racing, and that will be the case until a new design/installation is homologated for use across the field, consistent with the control nature of Gen3.
“Yeah, we’re doing a test for Supercars,” added Whincup.
“We’ve done a couple of days; probably need another one or two to really iron it out.
“But, we’ll get to the bottom of it, for sure. This year, we’ve spoken a lot about parity and that’s probably deterred from improving the cars – and the steering rack’s probably on the top of the list – but we’ll get there.”
Whincup is co-driving with Broc Feeney, who was second-quickest in Friday practice, splitting the two Erebus Motorsport entries.
Both of those drivers expressed confidence with attacking Sandown’s kerbs.
“I don’t see a reason why not,” said practice pace-setter Brodie Kostecki, when asked that question by Speedcafe.
“I think a lot of the teams have done race runs and there’s been no dramas whatsoever, from what I’ve seen.”
His team-mate, Will Brown, added, “Yeah, I definitely won’t be driving around [the kerbs], I can tell you that much.
“It’s a lot faster going over them, so it seemed fine for us.”
Practice 4 starts this morning at 10:45 local time/AEST.
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