Winton testing wrap-up
03 Jun 2014
With 17 V8 Supercars testing at Winton on Mondaya passer-by on the Hume Freeway could have been fooled into thinking a round of the Championship was underway.
Actually, it's because there have been so many V8 Supercars Championship events stacked into such a short time period they were all there.
That meant this was the first chance for most teams to test since the sydney.com V8 Supercar Test Day in Sydney in February.
Through those months teams haven't stopped developing parts and thinking up new set-ups to try, they just haven't had the chance to try them in the short practice sessions now prevalent at rounds. And with co-driver sessions dropped from events this year, letting the part-timers have a crack also meant a test day was a necessity.
As a result all bar one Victorian-based team elected to test. The lone wolf was Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport, which ran Russell Ingall in the Repair Management Australia Holden Commodore VF before the Clipsal 500.
Red Bull Racing Australia and Erebus Racing V8 test tomorrowat Ipswich Raceway in Queensland. Tekno Autosports tested prior to Perth and Dick Johnson Racing is waiting till after the Castrol Townsville 500. Watch out for news from that test on v8supercars.com.au.
Of course, being Victoria on the second day of winter, there was every chance of rain, but after a damp track greeted the teams at 9am it soon fined up into dry and consistent conditions. Cars ran until darkness descended - literally.
The tight and twisty track had nothing like the grip that was generated by freshly laid sealant during the Winton 400 in April. Then BJR's Fabian Coulthard had qualified on pole for Race 8 with a 1:19.6538. Yesterday, with green tyres a rarity, a great time was in the 1:23s and most lapped in the 1:24s and 1:25s.
Incidents were rare and none significant, with all teams reporting progress had been made.
Here's the summary.
All three Holden Commodores VFs BJR races in the V8 Supercars Championship ran at Winton yesterday; Fabian Coulthard and Pirtek Enduro Cup co-driver Luke Youlden shared the Lockwood entry, Jason Bright and Andrew Jones were in the Team BOC car and Dale Wood and Kiwi Chris Pither drove the Advam/GB Galvanising Commodore.
However, Pither has yet to be signed to join Wood for the three enduros.
Team co-owner Brad Jones' son Macauley also ran 87 laps in a Holden Commodore VE as he prepares for his debut in the Dunlop Development Series at the Castrol Townsville 500. His stint came to a smoky end, although the team was yet to officially diagnose the cause as this was written.
With its tyre bank limited, BJR concentrated on testing the fifth generation Triple Eight Race Engineering front upright in Coulthard's Commodore. There was also some rear geometry experimentation.
Bright drove the Lockwood car to sample the upright, but at this stage the plan is that only Coulthard will have it for the Skycity Triple Crown Darwin 400 on June 20-22.
All four V8 Supercars Championship cars run out of the factory Ford team's Campbellfield headquarters tested at Winton on Tuesday.
As reported separately, V8 Supercars Championship leader Mark Winterbottom believes he has made performance gains with his Pepsi-Max Falcon FG II, especially for qualifying. He also drove the Jeld-Wen Falcon of Jack Perkins in an attempt to help his struggling teammate get up to speed.
All four co-drivers had seat time; Steve Owen in Winterbottom's #5 Falcon, Paul Morris in the #6 of last-start winner Chaz Mostert, while Dean Canto renewed acquaintances with David Reynolds and the Bottle-O Falcon. The last time he drove it was when they won the Sunday race at the Gold Coast 600 last November.
Cameron Waters drove the Jeld-Wen Falcon as well as his own development series entry.
The team worked through a program that tested both new componentry and set-ups.
"It was an awesome day and I don't think I've ever achieved so much at a test day, ever," said Mostert. "We tried a few new things and some settings which were a little outside the square, but we worked on the weak areas and didn't lose any of our strengths."
All four Jack Daniel's and Norton Hornet Nissan Altimas were in action, primarily working on chassis set-up work and getting three of the four endurance co-drivers seat time. Briton Alex Buncombe, who will share with Todd Kelly, is not scheduled to test until August.
Team Manager Scott Sinclair told v8supercars.com.au the four cars worked through a significant amount of new componentry and set-up ideas, some of which proved promising, others not so much. More than 100 laps were completed by each car.
"A lot of it was stuff that would be a bit of a gamble to do before a race or before qualifying, so ticking those sorts of things off," he said. "We found a couple of things that will lead us in a couple of new directions.
"And inevitably, we also found things not to do and that's almost as valuable, because the next time you a have a similar problem you don't go the wrong way in a qualifying or a race."
The team is conscious of improving its qualifying performance, although a limited tyre bank made progress on that front difficult to validate.
The missing ingredient was any substantial engine development work, which Nismo in Japan is heavily involved in.
Both Valvoline Volvo S60s and all four team drivers ran at Winton, but while Alex Premat shared with Scott McLaughlin and Greg Ritter with Robert Dahlgren, team owner Garry Rogers insists the pairings are not finalised.
"We have some ideas of what we want to do but I am not going to make a decision until nearer to Sandown," he said. "At this stage we are just reviewing the whole situation."
The S60s have been through a very public event-based development program so far in their debut season. While the speed has been there from the first event, the vibrations set up by Polestar-developed narrow angle V8 engine have caused parts to crack and break.
The team has also had alternator power loss and power steering issues which have proved stubbornly difficult to resolve despite attempts at different solutions.
So while new go-faster chassis parts were being tested, there was also an emphasis on completing lots of laps - both cars did around 90 - to stress reliability.
"We're on to the power steering thing and the alternator thing and tried a couple of other matters there and I think at this stage we are okay," Rogers said.
"Now we have an accumulation of kilometres on a whole lot of things means we are a bit more confident with what we have got reliability-wise."
Rogers said Dahlgren - who has qualified well but struggled for race pace in his rookie V8 Supercars season - went "alright".
The four-car Walkinshaw Racing squad - which comprises the two Holden Racing Team Commodores, the Supercheap Auto Racing entry and the HHA car - tested around 50 new parts, software changes and set-ups between them at Winton.
Three of the four Pirtek Enduro cup co-drivers - Greg Murphy (with James Courtney in HRT #22), Warren Luff (with Garth Tander in HRT #2) and Tony D'Alberto (with Tim Slade in the SCAR entry) - also tested.
Only Nick Percat's co-driver, Briton Oliver Gavin, was absent. But the rookie didn't have the HHA Commodore to himself, as both Courtney and Tander also sampled it and the car completed more than 120 laps.
WR Team principal Adrian Burgess told v8supercars.com.au the 50 Winton changes brings to more than 120 the number of items the squad has introduced since the latest reinvention of the team got going under his management early this year.
"Greg Murphy had his first drive today since the Eastern Creek pre-season test and his first comment was 'that is a completely different car to the start of the year' and he was saying that in a positive way'," Burgess said. "That was good."
Included in the changes introduced at Winton was the solution to a "fundamental issue with the car" found at the Perth 400. The solution was tested on two cars and the other two cars are scheduled to get it in time for the Skycity Triple Crown in Darwin on June 20-22.
Burgess said the challenge now for the team is to take a mountain of data and decipher what worked, what didn't, what it means and what can be implemented for Darwin.
