Team 18 has suggested a fix for the Gen3 Supercars transaxle issues have been experienced in multiple cars thus far.
Scott Pye lost track time at the official test day at Sydney Motorsport Park when his Chevrolet Camaro broken a mount, completing just seven laps in the afternoon session.
It follows several instances of transaxles coming loose across the field during shakedowns and private testing, with Team 18 putting forward a simple switch in material from aluminium to steel as the solution.
“It’s just broken a mount,” Team Manager Bruin Beasley told Speedcafe.com.
“We’ll have to get it back to have a look at it and see what everyone else is up to.
“We’ve got an upgrade of a metal one that we reckon we’ll probably do, so Supercars have said they’ll have a look at it, and we’ll go down that path properly.
“[It is] Exactly the same thing, just a different material.”
It looks like a fix for another drama with the new-spec wheels is also close.
Teams have had difficulty mounting cold rims onto a hot spindle but that issue is also close to being resolved, according to Brad Jones.
“I think they’re starting to work out exactly what that is, so we just need to all agree on what the fix is, and once we do that, we’ll all machine our wheels and things will be fine,” he told Speedcafe.com.
Brad Jones Racing topped both sessions of the official test day, courtesy of Andre Heimgartner in the #8 R&J Batteries Camaro in each instance.
Team 18’s Pye finished the day 20th-fastest on combined times and team-mate Mark Winterbottom eighth, rounding out an all-Camaro top eight.
That statistic has led to a furore over parity, and conjecture over just how true a form guide the test day actually represents due to various factors such as tyre usage and weight discrepancies.
Beasley thinks it is also not reflective of even Team 18’s true pace.
“I think in real terms we were third-fastest if you take the super softs out of it, and Scott would have been up there as well but we didn’t get a chance to do the last run with green tyres and all that sort of stuff,” he added.
“They were both in the top five all day really, but it doesn’t look so good for Scott being down there when he didn’t run for that last part of that day, so I think we’re pretty close and we’ve still got a test day to go.”
Team 18 will test again on March 1 at Winton, along with other Victorian teams.
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