Supercars explains faster fuel flow plan

The series moved to a new refuelling system as part of Gen3 last year, ditching the old dual coupling for a single-probe system that fills and breaths through one connection.

That the fuel flow was significantly slower than the old system was flagged in the early days of the new rules, however disappeared as a talking point once the full extent of the parity woes that rocked last season came to light.

As reported by Speedcafe, fuel flow has been thrust back into the spotlight after the pair of refuelling races in Townsville and Sydney.

Supercars has been working with Ford homologation team Dick Johnson Racing on a new control part for the fuel fillers which should improve the flow rate, and could be made available for the Sandown 500.

“We know when we went to this filler, we weren’t happy with with the flow rate, because it’s been a pretty much double the time it used to take pre-Gen3,” Supercars General Manager of Motorsport Tim Edwards told Speedcafe.

“But it kind of dropped off the priority list with everything else that we had going on for the last 12 months.

“We’ve tested a revised part and now we know that the flow rates of that and presented all that information to the [Supercars] Commission.

“We never set about slowing down the refuelling as much as we did with Gen3. So it’s just about trying to get back closer to where we were pre-Gen3.”

Edwards added that the new part is unrelated to concerns in the paddock that some teams have faster flow rates than others.

“That’s always been an issue; you know, everybody, always, every team, has played around and just looked at ways that they might be able to improve their flow rate by 0.1 of a litre,” he said. “That would be a holy grail, if you if you can find it.

“But this has got nothing to do with that. This is that totally unrelated.

“This is all about not having cars sitting for stationary for a minute at Bathurst, because that’s how long it takes to put a full tank of fuel in. That’s not a good spectacle. This is just about speeding that up.

“And why wouldn’t you? Who wants cars sitting there for a minute when you can have them sitting there for 35 seconds or something like that?”