The ‘P-word’ has long haunted Supercars, perhaps no more than in the Gen3 era.
Ford teams felt they were disadvantaged for most of the 2023 season. They won just six races in the 28-race season with four of those coming in the final two rounds after a big parity swing.
Work in the off-season has brought the gap to Chevrolet squads down markedly and Ford squads have won four of the 14 races to date.
By and large, Triple Eight Race Engineering has been the team to beat with Will Brown and Broc Feeney.
However, Ford squads Walkinshaw Andretti United, Tickford Racing, and Grove Racing have kept the leading Chevrolet team honest.
Those aforementioned Ford squads dominated Sunday’s podium at the Townsville 500 led by Matt Payne with Chaz Mostert and Cameron Waters in tow.
Mostert, Waters, and Payne occupy third through fifth respectively in the points behind Brown and Feeney.
Speaking after Sunday’s race in Townsville, Walkinshaw said upcoming dynamometer testing will put any lingering engine parity concerns to bed.
“Obviously parity has become something that’s a little bit quieter this season – and it should be,” said Walkinshaw in the post-race press conference.
“There’s a lot of work that’s gone on in the off-season from Supercars with the wind tunnel testing to try and fix the clear and obvious issues that we had last year.
“And there’s AVL (dyno) testing going on with the engines very soon as well which will hopefully clear up if there is any discrepancies in the engine side. That will get put to bed as well.
“At the moment, every other round, a different side of the camp – be it Ford or Chev – are complaining that there is parity issues. So when you’ve got both sides complaining equally at each other, you’re probably doing something right.”
The upcoming engine evaluation follows wind tunnel testing in the off-season.
Former Tickford Racing team principal Tim Edwards, who is now Supercars’ head of motorsport, earlier this year said the high-end dynamometer testing will go a long way to putting any parity fears at ease.
“Every NASCAR team uses them, Formula 1 teams use them, it is state of the art,” said Edwards during coverage of the Darwin Triple Crown.
“In fact, we plug in the track data so this dyno actually runs Bathurst. So if you stood there and watched it, if you picture it in your head, you can actually hear the car making every gear shift, slowing for every corner, accelerating, so you’re putting in real-world data.
“We can do that, plug both engines in, and do the same thing on both. It gives us great information. What we’ve been doing for so long has got us to a really good place. We are so close now.
“My yard stick for measuring that is on the Friday morning I have GM teams complaining to me and on Friday afternoon I have Ford teams complaining. It tells you you’re in a sweet spot when you’ve got both sides complaining.”
Edwards said there is the possibility that no changes are made to the engines but that Supercars will use the “world’s best practice” to validate their understanding.
Supercars continues it season at the Sydney SuperNight on July 19-21.
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