McLaughlin targets Red Bulls

Rising V8 Supercars star Scott McLaughlin is hoping against hope to renew his rivalry with Red Bull Racing at this weekend’s Winton 400 because it will almost certainly mean his Volvo Polestar Racing S60 will be running near the front of the pack.

However, McLaughlin has admitted his new Volvo, which has rocked the category with its pace on debut, may struggle at Winton even though the team is trying out new performance parts.

McLaughlin has had a series of fierce dices with Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup – who run one-two in the Championship – including memorable door-banging side-by-side runs with the latter at the Clipsal 500 and the former at the Tyrepower Tasmania 400.

Whincup was also penalised five grid spots for an aggressive block of McLaughlin at the Formula One Rolex Australian Grand Prix and they staged a dramatic dice in Race Six last weekend in Tasmania.

“If we are battling with them then we are going to be going pretty good,” McLaughlin said.

“The best thing about my battles with them is that the racing has been pretty clean. It’s not like we are having an ugly battle and that is all we can expect.”

McLaughlin said he welcomed the description of his battles with Red Bull Racing and Whincup as a “rivalry”.

“It’s bloody cool. They are the best. To beat them and Jamie in particular is great. I enjoy it.”

After two Championship events and Albert Park – where McLaughlin claimed the S60’s first win – the 20-year old New Zealander has identified front-end grip in slow corners as the weakest part of his new car’s technical armoury.

Therefore he believes the S60 will struggle for race-winning pace at Winton because it has the slowest average speed of any track used in the Championship.

“We don’t have as much front grip as some of the other teams and Winton is obviously tight and twisty,” McLaughlin said. ”So we are looking for a solid points haul.

“It’s just a gut feeling, but I think we are just going to have to survive this round.”

One change the Volvo team is adapting to is the movement of 20kg in weight ballast from the bottom to the top of the engine. This happened for the Tasmanian round because V8 Supercars wanted to make sure the S60 did not have a centre of gravity advantage – and therefore a handling advantage – over its competitors. 

McLaughlin, who is in his second V8 Supercars Championship season, revealed the Volvo Polestar team was working to rectify the grip issue, but the quick turn around from last weekend’s Tasmanian event meant changes could only be limited.

“We have some new bits; we have done as much as we can for this weekend. We have a couple of new things to try and hopefully we can get those going,” McLaughlin said.

“But it’s also just a matter of getting miles in the cars. That’s the main thing; we haven’t had a test day yet. This will be the first time I have driven at Winton all year.”

A fundamental issue the team is grappling with is the vibrations set up by the Polestar-developed 5.0-litre version of the B8444S Volvo V8 engine, which uses a flat plane crankshaft.

The vibration is causing cracks and breakages which the team never encountered when running Holdens.

“We are getting on top of a few things … but the shaking in the car is that much a few things are popping up that we are getting on top of,” McLaughlin explained.

“The biggest downfall is the boys can’t do a normal setup and just go again. They have to strip the whole car and crack test it to see what it is like and that probably puts us behind the eight ball a little bit fabrication-wise.

“But better safe than sorry.”

McLaughlin rose from 15th in the Championship to seventh after three top 10 finishes in Tasmania. He has set himself the goal of finishing fifth in the Championship, but admits he hasn’t completely dismissed the possibility of a fairy tale title win.

“We have had a good start but we need to keep on top of it and keep developing the car and getting it better.

“It’s going to be a tough ask to win the Championship … but if we can get a top five in the Championship it would definitely feel like a win to us and would set us up well for next year.”