SUPERCARS expects to determine its mandated minimum car weight next week in a development being eagerly awaited by teams.
The new Mustang and Camaro are hoped to be considerably lighter than their Gen2 predecessors.
However, it has become clear Ford’s Gen3 Supercar is heavier than its Chevrolet counterpart, at least partly owing to the weight of its 5.4-litre Coyote engine compared to the rival 5.7-litre pushrod.
Multiple pitlane sources have suggested the overall weight difference between cars could be as high as 60kg, setting the stage for the 14 Camaros to be heaped with significant ballast.
Even from car to car of the same brand, there is said to be variances in the ballpark of 10-15kg.
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Brad Jones, whose team topped yesterday’s Sydney Motorsport Park test, said the situation had made elements of data harvesting irrelevant.
“It’s an opportunity to get data at a different type of circuit but I mean it’s not that accurate because none of us know how much weight we need to put in the cars,” Jones told V8 Sleuth.
“But right now everyone is sort of in the same boat.”
Triple Eight team manager Mark Dutton revealed some Camaros, including his squad’s, were running engine ballast at Eastern Creek.
“We had the engine ballast in and other Camaros didn’t, which means that naturally they have got a little bit of an engine CoG (centre of gravity) advantage at the test day that won’t carry forward so it’s not accurate,” he said.
Supercars head of motorsport Adrian Burgess said the picture should soon become clearer.
“We’re getting closer. Clearly it (minimum weight) was not something we were able to put in the draft rulebook until we got cars built,” he told V8 Sleuth.
“Our problem still at the moment is we don’t have full cars built, so we have taken a bit of a snapshot from each of the teams but even those cars aren’t final.
“We’re still missing some componentry whether it is leg protection, some teams still don’t have dashboards in the car, some teams don’t have camera systems fitted, so we’re not at a point where I can say ‘this is going to be the number’.
“We need to go away and carry on finishing these cars with the teams.
“It will be a very quick and easy thing for us to put and to be honest at this stage we’re probably going to go safe for now, get to Newcastle, do an analysis of what ballast people have got in the car to get to that minimum and then we’ll gradually reduce it.
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“But we have got to make sure we don’t run so close to the minimum that teams don’t have the ability to repair bodywork.
“Because naturally the cars always get heavier as they get older, just like me, so we have got to make sure we leave enough room so they can repair the car without being forced to spend money on new bodywork every week to remain near the limit.
“It’s still a bit of a work in progress.”
Burgess insists Gen3 will be lighter even with the need for ballast.
“At the moment we should be a good chunk lower,” he said.
“We will have to bite the bullet soon. We know what our heaviest car is that we’ve taken a read on, so it’s going to be somewhere around where that car is.”
For reference, the minimum weight set for the 2023 Super2 Series, which will be made up exclusively of Gen2 Mustangs and ZB Commodores, is 1400kg (including driver and their full apparel).
