S5000’s first competitive visit to The Bend Motorsport Park follows the successful introduction of a new control soft tyre.
The upgraded Hoosier rubber formally debuted last month at Sydney Motorsport Park, producing a year-on-year pole position time improvement of more than a second.
But there’s much more to the new tyre than outright pace, with it providing drivers with better early-race feel and confidence under brakes, according to Garry Rogers Motorsport technical guru Stefan Millard.
“The feedback has been pretty good so far,” Millard told V8 Sleuth.
“Obviously the main purpose of the change was to give the guys more confidence on a cold tyre and with the change to the front tyre diameter and sidewall shape, being able to follow more closely and the front tyre not going off and overheating.
“Overall we’re really happy with it. It has achieved what we wanted.”
The characteristics of the tyre are now more transferrable to other categories too, with performance peaking early as opposed to gradually building across a race weekend.
“I think it has changed the flow of the weekend,” Millard added.
“Obviously the old tyre, our quickest lap of the weekend was generally set in Race 2 on a tyre that has been used for qualifying and Race 1, which is pretty unique in any category really.
“Whereas these, with our 20-minute quali session, it definitely requires you to have that initial crack, cool them down, maybe bleed the tyres mid-session and then have another go at it, rather than just than that continuous run that we used to have.”
Just a single set of green tyres will continue to be made available to competitors at each race weekend.
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Cooper Webster returns this weekend at The Bend for the penultimate round of the S5000 Australian Drivers’ Championship.
Webster missed the SMP round due to a calendar clash with his British GB4 Championship commitments – and with Joey Mawson and James Golding also out, Aaron Cameron charged into the box seat in the race for the 2023 Gold Star.
Mawson still leads the standings but remains sidelined amid a supplement investigation.
Cameron is two points behind Mawson, with Webster a further 75 adrift.
S5000 has only previously raced at The Bend once: a non-championship round in 2019.
Entry list: Round 5, The Bend Motorsport Park
| Number | Sponsor | Driver |
| 2 | The Fuzzies Game Team BRM | Mark Rosser |
| 18 | Team Valvoline GRM | Aaron Cameron |
| 37 | Versa Motorsport | Cooper Webster |
| 41 | Wholesale Diesel | Kody Garland |
| 48 | Nippy’s Versa Motorsport | Blake Purdie |
| 49 | Team Valvoline GRM | Jordan Boys |
| 71 | Hangcha Racing | Ben Bargwanna |
| 88 | Team BRM / 88 Racing | Aaron Love |
| 96 | Crown Windows / Hogan Prestige Cars | Nic Carroll |
