Tickford Racing’s #55 Mustang and Team 18’s #20 Camaro are today taking to The Bend Motorsport Park in South Australia for the category test.

The primary reason for the running is to complete a final on-track evaluation of the new control steering rack that is set to be adopted next year.

The existing Sportech rack has been a sore point since the Gen3 cars debuted at the start of 2023 and is due to be replaced by a Tickford Racing-made unit.

Various iterations of the Tickford racks have been trialled in Mustangs and Camaros for over 12 months, including in race conditions.

Supercars will also use the day to complete more laps with Dunlop’s new, longer-lasting control tyre that it hopes will improve racing.

The Bend, which returns to the championship in September with a 500km enduro, is an ideal location for testing both the steering rack and tyre given its long, high-load corners.

Its long main straight also makes it a useful addition to Supercars’ ongoing study into aerodynamics and specifically the panels on the two cars.

While off-season wind tunnel testing at Windshear in the USA largely cooled the downforce debate, the Ford camp remains concerned over high-speed performance.

At least some of that is thought to be due to aerodynamic factors.

Ryan Story, team principal of Ford homologation team Dick Johnson Racing, noted the potential value of the test during an episode of Speedcafe’s upcoming KTM Summer Grill series.

“[The test is] going to allow them to explore some of the various hypotheses that they have in terms of what’s actually going on and what’s different from, for example, how the cars were presented at Windshear to how they’re racing,” Story explained.

The Mustangs were permitted to adopt lighter versions of various composite panels during 2024 as the result of Centre of Gravity testing undertaken in March.

One theory is the panels are deflecting at high-speed, potentially impacting performance and contributing to vibration complaints noted by Ford drivers at Bathurst in October.

The quality of the panel fit on each race car has also been studied by Supercars, which was seen utilising a 3D scanner as part of post-session checks at several late-season events.

Both the Mustang and the Camaro were run in the Windshear tunnel with their panel gaps taped up, representing a ‘best case scenario’ for panel fit.

While not divulging details, Supercars’ motorsport manager Tim Edwards confirmed to Speedcafe at the Adelaide 500 that the category is not resting in its quest for parity.

“We can’t just turn a blind eye to it and say, ‘she’ll be right because we’ve been to Windshear and AVL’. We’re not doing that,” said Edwards.

“We’ve seen small differences between the cars at different tracks. That’s where we go digging deeper.

“I won’t divulge what we’ve seen but we see differences every now and then and say, ‘OK, let’s go down that path and explore’.”

Supercars has previously stated that “engine driveability calibration” will also be evaluated during the testing at The Bend.