Stacked inside Red Bull Ampol Racing’s transporter were boxes labelled ‘Ford Performance Parts’, as seen in the above image.
While Triple Eight and Dick Johnson Racing were both at the circuit undertaking engine testing, the boxes had nothing to do with Ford’s current crankshaft scramble.
As it turns out, the Chevrolet motor introduced for the start of the Gen3 era last year runs the same Ford Performance alternator as the Mustangs.
“We made that decision as a HT (Homologation Team) in the development process to help make it easier for the category,” Triple Eight manager Mark Dutton told Speedcafe.
“You can get different alternators with different inertia and different smarts and this and that.
“But if you’ve got the same bits, you don’t have a point of argument for people. You can’t argue that yours is better than mine or mine is better than yours.”
Under Gen3’s single-supplier model, all the Chevrolet Supercars motors are built by Ken McNamara’s KRE Race Engines.
Dutton explained that Triple Eight’s truck was simply playing middleman for the latest batch of alternators.
“There are a few little different processes going from a road car part [to the race car],” Dutton added.
“Kenny will spend some time on them, Sparky (Paul Sleeman, Triple Eight’s electrician contractor) will spend some time on them, just with some of the fittings and things like that.
“But nothing internally is changed.”
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Triple Eight had little to report from Monday’s test, where it ran some minor mapping changes for the Chevrolet engine that had resulted from AVL testing in the United States.
“You don’t get to tune the car or anything like that, it was just Supercars running a few different things that they’d worked on over in the States,” explained Dutton.
“Hopefully everything that’s been learnt overseas can be applied.”
The day also marked the first hitout for the Ford engine’s new crankshaft, which had been air-freighted from Japan in the wake of a series of failures at Sandown.
It remains unclear how many of the new cranks will be available for Bathurst and whether Supercars will make any performance-related changes to the Mustang motor.
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