Supercars has convened a meeting of team owners tomorrow in Bathurst as a deadlock over parity changes for the Great Race continues.
Speedcafe has learned that teams were notified last night of the meeting, as crews descend on Mount Panorama for the Repco Bathurst 1000.
Ford is understood to be pushing for an aerodynamic change to the Mustang in order to shift the downforce balance rearward, by modifying both the front bar and rear wing.
There has already been one change to the Mustang bodywork during the season, when a suite of changes on and around the rear wing was introduced in time for the NTI Townsville 500 in order to address a pitch issue.
However, said pitch issue was discovered during a formal parity review which was ‘triggered’ by an accumulation of uncompetitive performances for the Mustang against the Chevrolet Camaro.
Ahead of the Bathurst 1000, the parity trigger has not yet been hit again.
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As such, a change to the Mustang’s aerodynamics would require some level of discretion to be exercised by the Supercars Board, which goes some way to explaining the impasse.
Chevrolet teams are thought to be united in their opposition to another parity adjustment without the trigger having been hit.
On the other hand, Ford teams are concerned by what transpired at the Sandown 500, the precursor to the one race of the year which is guaranteed to have the eyes of general Australian sport fans on Supercars.
Adding to the conjecture about what has been proposed for the Mustangs is recent form in the Repco Supercars Championship.
Camaros did lock out the top five positions when the chequered flag flew at the Sandown 500 just over a fortnight ago, but the Mustang would have swept the podiums in all three sprints which were held in the preceding event of the season at The Bend if not for Erebus Motorsport’s Brodie Kostecki.
That much is somewhat academic given the parity trigger is based on lap times rather than race results, with the threshold understood to be a one-tenth discrepancy over an adjusted 60-second lap, based on the top six cars from each make.
However, given how the Mustangs performed at The Bend, Chevrolet figures argue that there is no basis for what they perceive as a leg-up for their rivals.
The Ford camp, on the other hand, is convinced a change is necessary, their position formed in part on the basis of validation work conducted at Queensland Raceway on Friday.
Speedcafe understands that Will Davison, one of the full-time drivers for Ford’s homologation team, Dick Johnson Racing, was given two hours in the squad’s wildcard #98 Mustang with the proposed bodywork tweaks applied.
Ford teams have parts ready to apply to their race cars if given the green light, and it is said that they are simple to install.
However, that presumably relies on how tomorrow’s meeting plays out.
Practice 1 for the Bathurst 1000 starts on Thursday at 13:20 local time/AEDT.
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