True to recent form, Mustangs locked out the front rows for both encounters at Wanneroo Raceway but this time their drivers were able to convert, with Walkinshaw Andretti United’s Chaz Mostert victorious on the Saturday and Tickford Racing’s Cam Waters on the Sunday.
Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Will Brown, the championship leader, made the podium in both races, but was the only Chevrolet driver to finish in the top six in Sunday’s 55-lap encounter.
For his team-mate Broc Feeney, though, the weekend was a relative struggle, including qualifying 12th on Sunday, which led to a cheeky quip from Whincup.
“He qualified poorly, he made his bed when he qualified 12th,” said the Team Principal of Triple Eight, the Chevrolet homologation team.
“So, no, we’ll go away and work out why we weren’t the quickest.
“Gee, parity looked bad this weekend, but we don’t talk about that any more.”
Whincup quickly confirmed that he was indeed making a “tongue in cheek” remark but, when invited to comment seriously on parity, opined that all appeared well.
“Hundred percent comfortable,” he replied.
“Nothing this weekend indicated there was any parity issue.
“Everyone was going hard and we just didn’t quite do a good enough job.”
Supercars and the homologation teams achieved aerodynamic parity during the off-season through an unprecedented category wind tunnel testing programme, while centre of gravity has since been tested and verified as equal.
Transient dynamometer testing remains outstanding although, after updates to the Ford unit over the off-season after the engine programme was taken over by Dick Johnson Racing, the only obvious evidence of a possible disparity was a generally small deficit in the speed trap at the Bathurst 500 in February.
Triple Eight’s teams’ championship lead blew out to 674 points, more than a full event’s worth of points, at Wanneroo but the next four on the table are now Ford squads.
Discussion about this post