THE new Gen3 Supercars could be capable of smashing lap records if Thursday’s shakedown for Triple Eight and PremiAir Racing is anything to go by.
Cars consistently lapped in the 1m09s bracket at Queensland Raceway in timings done by V8 Sleuth, with teams indicating they dipped into the low ‘nines’.
That’s a mighty impressive start given the existing race lap record is a 1:09.6229s set by Scott McLaughlin in 2019.
McLaughlin also holds the qualifying record, being a 1:08.4208s from 2017.
However, there is still a crucial factor which could hold the key to just how fast Gen3 will be: a final ruling on the category’s minimum weight. That figure remains listed as TBC in the recently published 2023 operations manual (for reference, 1400kg is the minimum weight in Super2 this year where the handed-down Gen2 Mustangs and ZB Commodores will race).
“They’re a fast car. They’re light,” Triple Eight team manager Mark Dutton told V8 Sleuth.
“We don’t know what the final category weight will be, we’re still yet to be told that.
“Hopefully with the cars being basically identical under the skin, there should be no reason that one car should be dramatically heavier than the other car, which means that we should be able to keep the weight of the cars down.
“That’s the big contributing factor as to why they’re still so fast with so little downforce compared to the Gen2 cars, because of the reduction in weight.
“The reduction in weight just makes for amazing race cars.
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“It’s better, it’s safer, everything is better with having a light race car so hopefully the racing weight that the category goes with is still super light.”
The minimum weight figure should be established shortly, once all 25 race cars have been fully built.
“The category is doing the right thing and surveying all the teams as they build their cars to make sure that there’s no anomalies, which once again, with all the similar parts, there shouldn’t be,” Dutton added.
“And then once they get that, we imagine they will tell us very soon.”
