Triple Eight has replaced the Dick Johnson Racing-owned Motorsport Powertrains as the marque’s engine supplier as part of the Red Bull-backed team’s switch from General Motors.
Minor changes to the 5.4-litre Coyote V8 have been implemented ahead of this weekend’s season-opener in Sydney, but it’s only the beginning as the Brisbane squad applies its trademark attention to detail.
Team manager Mark Dutton told Speedcafe it’s reliability and not the tightly-controlled performance aspects of the engine that are the main focus after various failures last year.
“The drivers thought the base package was pretty good from the first time the drove it, so it’s not miles away, but the reliability is a big focus for us,” Dutton told Speedcafe.
“We’re in the understanding phase, really, and the testing phase, because everything’s quite a long lead time to actually invoke change and know that you can prove something specifically cracks and things like that.
“There’s a few little tidy ups we’ve done. They’re not power gains, because you can’t, there’s the cap to control power, so you’re not trying to change the power at all.
“But there’s just some tidy ups that you can do when you come in with fresh eyes, as we have.”
Triple Eight’s new engine shop built within its existing Banyo headquarters has so far churned out eight new engines and undertaken half-life rebuilds on five more.
Minor upgrades such as shifting the orientation of the throttle body have been applied to existing engines at Sydney Motorsport Park by Triple Eight engine shop staff.
“Little things like that don’t give you any more power, but it should give you a bit more balanced airflow through the manifold and things like that,” said Dutton. “They’re tidy ups.”
Dutton is unsure when further upgrades will be ready to roll out, noting the lengthy process of analysis, testing and homologation that must take place.
A particular focus is understood to be on the crankshaft, on which cracking has been reported despite a last-minute emergency supplier change ahead of the 2024 Bathurst 1000.
“We’re just starting the process of measuring, trying to understand, trying to put numbers to things so that you can make decisions based on those numbers,” Dutton said.
“You can have all logic in the world and apply really good science and engineering, but if it’s a factor that is unrelated to that, a chassis side factor, for example, you can tune up the engine side of things and still have the issue because it’s coming from the chassis.
“So it’s quite different to know for sure what the problem is, but we’re going to give it a red hot crack.”
Triple Eight’s engine efforts appeared to suffer a blow in January when the man recruited to head up the new department, Cam Clancy, departed the team.
The engine shop currently has just two full-time staff, former MPT employees Kaz Penwarden and Brent Blakey, with a third to join shortly.
“We haven’t tried to replace Cam like-for-like and we think we’re in a good place,” said Dutton.
“We think we could share the workload and we can treat it a bit like another T8 department, rather than a standalone thing.
“Kaz and Brent really stepped up and we’ve another young fellow starting soon, so we feel we are we have the right people in the building.”
Triple Eight driver Will Brown topped the opening leg of pre-season testing at Sydney Motorsport Park on Wednesday, leading Grove Racing’s Matt Payne in a Ford one-two.
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