Engines, wind tunnel testing on Whincup's Ford agenda

Triple Eight Race Engineering is in the throes of a championship fight, yet team boss Jamie Whincup is also balancing his team’s future with Ford and its current engine efforts.

While Whincup will spearhead Triple Eight’s move to Ford in 2026, the team is currently eyeing a second straight championship double in its final year with General Motors.

Broc Feeney leads Will Brown by 220 points, with the former odds-on to seal the Repco Sprint Cup at this weekend’s Century Batteries Ipswich Super 440.

While Whincup maintained his team is focused on a job at hand at Queensland Raceway, he explained how Triple Eight also has its hands full with its future endeavours.

Notably, Whincup revealed that Triple Eight is “all over" current efforts by Ford and current engine supplier Motorsport Powertrains (MPT) to investigate engine reliability.

“We’re absolutely all over it, all over every part of it,” Whincup told media on Friday.

“Because we are obviously going to take on the engine programme next year and for us, we’re ordering inventory right now. So if that inventory is changing, we need to be across it and know all about it.

“We’re more involved than anybody because we want to get it right. To make sure it’s good for the sport come the end of the year and, of course, that we’ve got a very, very good, solid package for 2026 as well.

“We’ll just apply good old-fashioned engineering science to the decisions and endorse the changes that are required and work with Ford Performance and also MPT to influence those decisions."

The team continued to get a head start on its future by tying down Feeney and Brown to the end of 2029.

Whincup also revealed that Triple Eight is planning to have its first Ford Mustang Supercar on track in three months ahead of testing involving all three brands at the end of the year.

Announced this week, a Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro and Toyota Supra will travel Stateside for wind tunnel testing.

On getting the first Ford on track, Whincup said: “That just got heavily delayed. We were well and truly on track but then a curveball has been thrown, we may have to prepare a car and put it in a container to go wind tunnel testing.

“A brand new $750,000 race car, I say investment, will go into a container and disappear for three or four months.

“We’re frantically trying to build a second car at the moment to get on the track to dig into a bit of data and learn what the Mustang is all about.

“I think we’re probably three months away from getting on track.”

Whincup knows all too well the work required behind being a homologation team, adding: “It’s a thankless job, the homologation team responsibility. Of course we pushed hard to get [the role], so I’m not complaining, it is what it is.

“From a performance point of view, we’d rather have the car in the country and be able to shake it down and learnt and understand it more, but that’s all part of the fun of being the HT.”

Supercars return to the track for dual Boost Mobile Qualifying from 9:35am AEST, followed by Race 23 (12:45pm AEST) and Race 24 (4:10pm AEST). Live coverage commences on Foxtel/Kayo from 8:00am AEST.