Quinn is the largest shareholder in Triple Eight Race Engineering and nowadays the outright owner of chassis 888A-063, the first Gen3 Supercar to win the Bathurst 1000, in the hands of Shane van Gisbergen and Richie Stanaway last October.
It was joined by an array of old Holden V8 Supercars, namely a Holden Racing Team VE Commodore, a Perkins Engineering VY Commodore, and the 1993 Great Race-winning Perkins VP Commodore, plus the Monaro 427C which was victorious in the 2003 Bathurst 12 Hour.
The Triple Eight Camaro, though, is a car which only made its racing debut in June 2023, having been built months earlier, and can thus hardly be considered ‘Historic’ in a regulatory sense.
Furthermore, the inaugural ITM Taupo Super400 will take place this coming April 19-21.
That is, a ‘current’ Supercar was driven on a current Supercars circuit, before the category has ever raced on it – a situation which is known to have caused unease among rival teams.
However, rather than being a means of sneaking in some testing, the real benefits are for the Supercars Championship broadly.
While Speedcafe has been advised that Greg Murphy, Steven Richards, and Craig Lowndes also drove the car, imagery shows it riding on Pirelli tyres, whereas Dunlop is the control tyre supplier for Supercars.
Additionally, the Camaro aerodynamics have been rehomologated following off-season category wind tunnel testing, and hence 888A-063 was not running in accordance with the current (2024) Vehicle Specification Document anyway.
With those facts in mind, there is no particular relevance in an engineering sense, and any running would be not dissimilar to taking any other loud, rear-wheel-drive powered saloon car – say, a TA2 – out to cut laps of Taupo International Motorsport Park.
Unsurprisingly, Supercars’ Motorsport department was made aware of the demonstration in advance and gave permission, it has been confirmed to Speedcafe.
The category’s Operations Manual includes provision for ‘Non-Testing Track Activities’, of which there are six:
- Any activity required by Supercars of a Team, excluding any compulsory Supercars Test Day.
- Corporate Rides
- Evaluation Day
- Demonstration Day [Limited laps for the purpose of selling a car]
- New Car Shakedown
- Promotional activities (such as filming TV advertisements) run under the permission of Supercars with conditions applied by Supercars.
The latter is the real benefit (aside from Quinn’s own enjoyment of one of his toys) of the Taupo Gen3 laps.
New Zealand missed out on a Supercars event last year following the somewhat sudden closure of Pukekohe, with the category eventually landing a multi-year deal for the championship to make its return to the country at Taupo from 2024.
Notably, with Taupo being located in Waikato whereas Pukekohe is located in Auckland and its event funded by an arm of the regional government, that contract required negotiations with new government bodies, with the New Zealand Major Events Fund now backing the event.
That makes the success of this year’s event even more important for the category, with the Gen3 demonstrations being a way of exciting race fans ahead of Supercars’ arrival three months from now.
Quinn, who also owns Taupo, said of the Supercars event on the Historic GP telecast, “It’s gonna be big and I hope the town’s ready for it. We’ll be ready for it, but it will be big.
“Everybody’s excited in Australia, everybody wants to come. In fact, they want to come and stay for two weeks, not just one, but we’ll start off with just one week.”
Triple Eight is building two brand-new Camaros for Broc Feeney and Will Brown for the season ahead.
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