The category undertook a study into the influence of inlet air temperature on the performance of the Ford and GM engines 12 months ago.
That led to changes – in the form of engine mapping tweaks and a restrictor change on the Ford – ahead of the Tasmania Super440.
Supercars’ motorsport boss Tim Edwards confirmed to Speedcafe that parity process will also be undertaken with the 5.2-litre Toyota V8 ahead of the return to Tassie.
“That’s underway and will be finalised before we go to the next round,” Edwards told Speedcafe in Christchurch.
“It’s exactly the same stuff that was done [with the Ford and GM] 12 months ago.
“There’s been a little bit of work done on it, but given the time constraints we had at the start of the year, it wasn’t finalised.”
Edwards added that only the Toyota needs to be assessed as the others are known quantities from the work done last year.
Ticking the temperature parity box ahead of Symmons Plains is important due to the likelihood of cold conditions at the Launceston circuit, which will be followed by the heat of Darwin.
“We’ve been racing in a similar temperature band that all the engines are dynoed at,” said Edwards, downplaying any concern that the work wasn’t done pre-season.
“We haven’t been to really hot and we haven’t been to really cold yet.”
Supercars has undertaken all parity work on the Toyota V8 locally, using the dyno of its Brisbane-based engine partner Craig Hasted.
The category took the Ford and GM engines to an AVL dyno in the United States in mid-2024 and had flagged intentions to return to a similar offshore facility with the Toyota.
Edwards, though, said such a plan remains “on hold at the moment” due to ongoing work on the specification of the Toyota.
“It’s not a priority because all parties are confident in the work we’re doing,” he said.
“What the AVL dyno showed us is that, actually, the tools we’ve got here are very good.
“That’s not to say we’re not going back to AVL, but to be fair to Walkinshaw, the other two engines had two and a half years of development and running before we actually went there.
“We’re still very early in the program. What we don’t want to do is go to AVL and then six months later, they need to change X, Y, Z part because they’ve had a reliability issue.
“You don’t know what you don’t know, it’s still early in that program so we won’t even consider doing it until we’re further down the track.”
Walkinshaw TWG CEO Bruce Stewart said on Friday at last weekend’s Christchurch Super440 that its focus remains on reliability.
That proved a prophetic statement given an engine issue for Ryan Wood cost him the Jason Richards Trophy just seven laps from home.
Stewart also noted “a bit of a hole” in the power curve of the Toyota V8 that needs addressing.
“That’s for them to resolve. There’s no adjustability to actually fill that hole at the moment,” explained Edwards.
“Whether that’s a different camshaft, etcetera, they need to design a new widget to do that. It’s not just a case of plugging a laptop in and resolving that.”
The work-in-progress nature of Toyota’s engine meant Supercars did not implement any changes as the result of the Supra triggering the parity review system after Taupo.
Wood scored Toyota’s first win in just the ninth race of the season at Taupo, having already ticked off podium and pole position milestones.
The early success of the Toyota is being trumpeted as a sign Supercars is ready to welcome more manufacturers to the grid under its Gen3 regulations.
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