Supercars champion Shane van Gisbergen believes the Gen3 prototypes are too easy to drive in their current form.
The New Zealander has been among those tasked with testing the Triple Eight Race Engineering-built Camaro, which will make its competitive debut in 2023.
Publicly, most drivers have spoken positively to the media about the new cars. Ergonomics to improve driver comfort have recently been fixed and the sequential shift has been installed; however, there remains an undertone of discontent among some, including van Gisbergen, related to the performance side.
Fundamental to the philosophy of Gen3 is creating a car that is less reliant on aerodynamic downforce to create grip, thus reducing dirty air to allow cars to follow close to one another.
With Gen3, more focus has been put on creating mechanical grip. However, a side effect of abandoning high downforce levels is a car that drivers describe as sitting on top of the road.
Anyone who has closely watched the Gen3 prototypes will have noticed that the cars tend to pitch less under brakes and out of corners relative to the Gen2 cars.
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For van Gisbergen, the “flat” nature of the Camaro he’s driven isn’t to his liking.
“I want them to feel like a Supercar, not just a car,” van Gisbergen explained, speaking with Speedcafe.com.
“Every time I get to the track, I see them and go, ‘far out, they look amazing!’
“They’re awesome looking cars, but on track, they just sit a bit flat.”
That lack of attitude between the two generations has been noticeable at Queensland Raceway through the high speed Turn 1.
The incumbent Gen2 cars scuff the road significantly, sending plumes of smoke from the front splitter.
Van Gisbergen said that aggressive attitude isn’t prevalent with the Gen3 cars.
“When you watch these [Gen2] cars, they’re awesome,” he said.
“Whenever you drive these cars, they’re almost violent to drive; the gearing, the way they move around, it’s awesome.
“You want them [the Gen3 cars] to have some of that character still.
“They’re a really good car, it’s a nice car, it does everything you want,” he added of the next-generation touring car.
“It’s wider, low centre of gravity. It’s cool, but you’re just driving around.
“I don’t know what engineering stuff you need to make it like these where they pitch and move and lift wheels. You want it to look cool on track, not just driving around – I think, anyway.
“You want it to be difficult to drive and you want them to be impressive to watch as well and guys make a mistake, whereas at the moment it’s a bit too easy to drive I think.
“The stick shift will make it hard, for sure. It’ll make it tougher. As I said, it’s a good car, but maybe too good.
“It’s like in some areas it’s too nice, it’s not a raw car. It doesn’t sound right, but you do a lap and it’s like everyone could’ve done that.
“It’s not a challenge to drive like these [Gen2] cars are or a GT car even. It’s not something you can hustle and get a lap time out of. You’re just driving.”
It must be noted that testing to date has largely focused on reliability running rather than performance testing.
Supercars has given its homologations teams, Triple Eight Race Engineering and Dick Johnson Racing, baseline set-ups to work with.
Eventually, race set-ups will be worked on. That’s when Gen3 project leader Adrian Burgess believes van Gisbergen might find a car that’s more to his liking.
“We’re happy with how it looks and feels at the moment,” Burgess, the category’s head of motorsport, told Speedcafe.com.
“When it comes time for the teams to do their performance testing, we believe with everything we’ve seen with the aero, and the design of the car, they will operate the car differently.
“Whilst this [Gen2] car, you can set this thing up to have a significant weight transfer front to rear, a lot of the reasons why you do that is because of the aero.
“With the reduced aero [with Gen3], I’m predicting that they won’t be going down that route as much. It’ll be more about mechanical grip. That’ll be for the teams to explore and get into when they go testing.
“At our stage with the prototypes, Supercars is controlling the set-up of the cars, and we’re not doing any performance work. Those two teams aren’t learning anything about how to set it up.”
The Gen3 prototypes are set to complete demonstration laps at the Ned Whisky Tasmania SuperSprint on March 25-27 and continue testing in the days after.
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