Shop
Having spent recent years in the relative comfort of its own pitlane at Albert Park, Supercars has been relegated to full support category mode this year after being displaced by F2.
That means tents with temporary flooring as garages with teams requiring to stage cars on a dummy grid before heading out on track.
They will also not have access to their full suite of gear during sessions with teams needing to wheel trollies with select tools and parts to pitlane for the races.
While it may be a foreign concept for some teams, MSR boss Stone reckons those with Super2 experience will be well equipped to face the logistical challenges posed by Albert Park.
“We’ve got take all of the equipment that we usually have set up ready to go along with us for the ride, and then pack it up and take it back at the end… much like a Super2 race,” he told Speedcafe in a special AGP preview video.
“Fortunately for us, we used to be a Super2 team, so we’ve dusted off some of the old equipment we used to use, we’ve given it a paint and a revamp, and getting ready to be able to function properly at the Grand Prix.
“Each car is allowed to take two trollies to pitlane. One for tyres, one for all their equipment. And from that we’ve got to operate the entire session and be packed up and out of there in the blink of an eye at the end.
“We know that there’s challenges we’ll have to face, but being that we’ve run in Super2 before we know it’s nothing we can’t handle, and we’re all prepared and ready to go.”
Another challenge is that the bulky data stations, which include multiple screens displaying race and car information, will remain in the support paddock during sessions.
That means race and data engineers will be back in the tents while other support crew head to pitlane to run the cars, putting a premium on radio communication.
“Our Retravision data station is the mission control centre of our race garage,” explained Stone.
“This is where the race engineers and data engineers have all of the information that they need and use to run every practice, qualifying and race session efficiently.
“This is always in the centre of iouyr garage, right near the pit boom, right where we are operating. Going into the Grand Prix, however, our data station is going to be in the support category field, so we’ve got the challenges of operating without equipment that we need to make key decisions not being there in pitlane.
“Because of this, we end up with a split crew on race day, where some of the crew will be in pitlane operating with the cars while the rest of the crew will be back in the infield looking at all the key information they have on the data station and calling the shots from there.
“We’ve got to make sure communication is key, because what is usually one united garage is split over two separate locations.”
Track action for the Melbourne SuperSprint kicks off on Thursday.
