As revealed by Speedcafe ahead of the pre-season hitout at Sydney Motorsport Park, the provision for a primary driver to complete 10 laps on a test day with another team has been scrapped.
It’s a move clearly aimed at Triple Eight, which currently boasts customer relationships with fellow Chevrolet teams PremiAir Racing, Brad Jones Racing, Team 18 and Matt Stone Racing.
Having one of its star drivers sample a customer team car on a test day has long been part of Triple Eight’s playbook.
Red Bull Ampol Racing ace Will Brown drove a PremiAir Camaro at a Queensland Raceway test in May last year to assess any differences between that and his own machine.
The flow of information between teams is more relevant than ever in the Gen3 era due to the control specification of the cars.
“There are teams that have got engineering relationships with other teams,” Supercars motorsport boss Tim Edwards told Speedcafe.
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“One could argue that, if they’re already sharing data and they’re already sharing set-ups and all those sorts of things, then if a driver from X team goes and drives for Y team, you’re effectively giving X team more test days, really.
“They’re already running the same setup and then they’ve got the same driver, so if you just follow along that line, you go ‘hang on, that’s not right’.
“So, we’re just trying to put some controls in place.”
Triple Eight boss Jamie Whincup expressed frustration at the rule change earlier this year, declaring “it was fine the way it was”.
Brown’s current co-driver, Scott Pye, slammed the rule on a recent episode of his Apex Hunters United podcast, declaring it “one of the worst decisions, I think, ever.”
“I was on the receiving end of that one year where it helped me at LDM,” continued Pye, who debuted with Triple Eight customer squad Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport in 2013.
“Jamie came and drove my car, gave us a bunch of feedback that I would never, as a rookie, have been able to learn or know, and he helped fix my car. He didn’t gain anything from that.
“Whincup would still have won his seven championships without driving my shitbox down the road, but it helped me a lot.
“Some people may think by getting rid of that, it’s going to hurt Triple Eight, which it actually doesn’t, it hurts the smaller guy.
“That’s why they have the customer program because they don’t have the resources to match them.”
That 2013 tie-up included Triple Eight dispatching drivers and engineers to LDM tests at Winton, as well as having Pye drive Whincup’s Red Bull Commodore at Queensland Raceway.
Edwards said the rule change preventing such swaps was settled upon before Supercars opted to restrict testing for 2025.
Teams have just two test days this year, down from three, and both take place with the full field on track, rather than in private.
Rookie test days, which the driver swap ban also applies to, have meanwhile been reduced from three to two for first-year drivers and two to one for second-year drivers.
“You could argue it’s less of a concern now because of that,” added Edwards of the fact testing has been restricted.
“However, if you had a customer team who had a rookie driver, and the same driver from X could go and drive for a customer team who’s got rookie days, they could get extra laps and feed information back to the mothership.”
The testing rule changes were introduced alongside alternations to the tyre allocation intended to assist rookies.
First-year rookies are allowed an extra 52 tyres for the season, while 44 are available to second-year rookies.
Rookies are permitted to utilise those as an extra set of pre-marked rubber in practice at nine events during the season, as well as on test days.
“We workshopped this with the teams, and most of them were onboard,” explained Edwards.
“We said ‘what’s more important to a rookie, extra tyres at the race meeting or an extra test day?’
“Is pounding around Winton time and again actually more benefit to the team than the driver?
“There’s no doubt that an extra set of tyres on a Friday is of greater benefit to the driver than the team and qualifying is one of the hardest things to do in this category.
“So, giving them an extra set of greens, pretty much everybody said that’s going to be a greater benefit to a rookie than an extra day at Winton in winter when it’s raining…”
Rookies are permitted to use an extra set of pre-marked tyres at Albert Park, Symmons Plains, Wanneroo, Hidden Valley, Townsville, Ipswich, Gold Coast, Sandown and Adelaide.
However, that privilege is revoked at the last three rounds if the rookie driver is in the Finals.
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