The Stapylton squad was part of two rounds of off-season wind tunnel testing and then engine testing after a lopsided set of results in 2023, when the teams fielding Mustangs were far from competitive for the most part.
Dick Johnson Racing, however, was subpar even in the context of the Ford teams’ collective struggles.
It finished fifth in the teams’ championship, one spot behind Tickford Racing, while Anton De Pasquale was the third-highest-finishing Mustang pilot in the drivers’ championship (eighth outright, four spots behind Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Chaz Mostert) and Will Davison fifth-highest (10th outright).
DJR, however, has had more pressing matters in recent months than resurrecting its own form.
Story, who has not long returned to Team Principal duties, said, “Well, it’s early days for the team; the off-season for us was predominantly focused on our role as the Ford homologation team.
“We’ve obviously been to Windshear [wind tunnel] – twice – and gone through the aero programme, and we’re really excited about aero parity.
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“Subsequent to that, we’ve embarked upon a very ambitious program to get the engines on the Ford side right.
“So, we’ve focused the predominant portion of our off-season campaign really on that task and, for us as the Shell V-Power Racing Team, we’re really looking forward with the calendar starting this weekend and going racing.
“It’s going to take a little bit of time for us to get back to where we want to be, and be consistently competitive, and have two cars up there fighting for trophies, week in, week out.
“We’re not shying away from that challenge, but our priority first and foremost is to have competitive Fords on the grid.”
DJR also took over Ford engine supply from Herrod Performance Engines during the off-season and, while that business is separate from the race team, Story has been spearheading the project to improve the 5.4-litre Coyote-based motor which powers the Mustangs.
That includes adding resources which were sorely lacking at the Yatala shop, and addressing “low-hanging fruit” which was hindering performance.
“Look, it was a pretty difficult situation,” recalled Story.
“I decided that I would take on the baton of leading the thing, to not disrupt the team too much.
“Pretty quickly, it was clear why the programme was in the place and in the state that it was in.
“So, we immediately resourced it; it had one full-time member of staff, so we immediately needed to triple that, and we were away.
“There were a number of other indicators that were pretty straightforward to understanding it once we actually had the opportunity to see that, and it was a matter of picking some of the low-hanging fruit there.
“But then it was a matter of really understanding and characterising the engine, going through a year’s worth of data and we only had DJR’s data anyway.
“So, we’ve had to use DJR’s data during that project and you probably couldn’t give DJR’s data from 2023 away at the back of the pit lane here.
“But, we were able to go through the course of the year and see where the engine had its strengths and weaknesses.
“We’ve worked through a raft of changes both from a hardware point of view, from a calibration point of view… It’s been all-encompassing, and there hasn’t been anything that we’ve left off the table.
“Then, working in conjunction with Supercars through that process… We’ve got a clear ruleset that we’re bound by, so we know what this engine is capable of, and we know what happens if we fit it in the window without necessarily understanding all of the vicissitudes associated with that.
“So, that’s kind of where the programme kicked off for 2023, and all credit to the to the previous programme that was in place.
“They delivered two engines per Ford last year and they were reliable engines.
“But, in terms of understanding where there were potential weaknesses, and how to address that, there was no plan.
“So, we developed a plan, we worked in conjunction with the series, and we’ve made huge inroads.
“We can’t quantify what they are just yet, but I’ll answer that one on Monday.”
DJR’s work on the Ford engine has raised concerns on the Chevrolet side.
Whincup has been increasingly frustrated at how parity work has now dragged into the second racing season of Gen3, amid conjecture about just how potent the Ford engine actually is/was, and no time yet for transient dynamometer testing given ongoing development of said engine.
Story shares Whincup’s frustration on the drain on resources which homologation duties have caused, but expressed a level of pessimism about how the Ford engine currently stacks up against the Chevrolet engine even now.
Practice 1 at Mount Panorama starts today but, if forecast rain does come to pass, then any disparity in engine performance may not become apparent until the ‘competitive sessions’ (qualifying onwards) kick off tomorrow.
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