Crucial Supercars wind tunnel testing ramps up
Crucial Supercars wind tunnel testing ramps up in United States
Mustang, Camaro, new Supra have all rolled out at Windshear facility
2026 Supercars season to start on February 20-22
Supercars and homologation teams are firmly on the journey to 2026, as wind tunnel testing ramps up in the United States.
A Ford Mustang, Chevrolet Camaro and new-for-2026 Toyota Supra have all spent time at the Windshear facility in North Carolina in recent days.
Windshear has set the motorsport industry standard, and has been used by the likes of NASCAR, IndyCar and Formula 1. The US$40million facility was established in 2008, and delivers actionable and repeatable results for motorsport and its teams.
Downforce and drag is being measured on all three Supercars in the effort to discover and adjust any aerodynamic differences before the start of the 2026 Repco Supercars Championship.
Supercars technical staff have overseen the testing along with representatives from homologation teams Triple Eight (Ford), Team 18 (General Motors) and Walkinshaw Andretti United (Toyota).
As the Supercars community wound down after a big season, representatives quickly jetted off to the States, where the three cars are being benchmarked against each other to ensure aerodynamic parity.
It comes after successful testing at Windshear at the end of 2023, which has since delivered close results across the 2024 and 2025 seasons.
In the last two seasons, Chevrolet won 33 races to Ford’s 24, and claimed 32 poles to 26. Camaros won Bathurst and the championship in 2024, while Mustangs took out both victories in 2025.
The next challenge is getting the Toyota up to speed against cars which have now raced for three seasons, with WAU and Brad Jones Racing to run five GR Supras from next season.
To date, the Camaro has been validated at Windshear, with the Mustang and Supra set for further runs. Then, data will be digested before all parties make a decision on site as to what needs to change.
"The Camaro has come out and it won't go back in. It's done what it needed to do — it set the benchmark. Then, the others have to match that,” Supercars Chief Motorsport Officer Tim Edwards told Supercars.com.
"There shouldn't be much to do with the Ford. We've made a couple of changes to that car where there are differences in areas where you don't see. On that, we're inducing some of the workload on the Ford by asking them to make some changes to make their car similar to the Camaro.
"For example, the front under tray is slightly different between the cars. While they’re balanced at the moment, the ideal scenario is if we can find a way of tuning to have the same under tray across all cars. So, we've asked all homologation teams to come with different parts, so we can tune the cars with different parts.”
By Monday, over 3000 kilometres of testing had been completed, with tunnel speed ranges recorded between 200km/h and 300km/h.
Each run is a minimum of 20 minutes, depending on the different maps that the crews can run through. A full sensitivity parity map takes 48 minutes, where cars cycle through all ride heights, rakes, yaw angles and more.
At each one of those sites, the tunnel stops, gathers data for 30 seconds to a minute, then moves on to the next site.
Where previous data exists on the Ford and Chevrolet packages, the Toyota had yet to be put in a wind tunnel. However, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) work on the Supra helped put all parties in the right direction, ensuring there were no surprises at Windshear.
Edwards was pleased with the progress, and hailed the collaborative efforts between the homologation teams as the end of the Windshear testing program approaches.
"Any changes will get agreed here. At the end of the process, we will sit down with the three homologation teams, because they're involved every step of the way,” Edwards said.
"For instance, when the Ford's in the tunnel, there will be people from Triple Eight there, but they will be joined by senior technical staff from Team 18 and WAU. That applies to everyone.
"All of the data's transparent, all of the conversations are transparent. Effectively, all three parties are working together to get the best outcome and seeing the cars signed off there.
"They're all here watching, so they get to see it firsthand what the data was and what the results are. At the end of it, you want to get to a point where you can comfortably utter the words, ‘we have aerodynamic parity’.
"Fundamentally, over the 12 days that we're here, all parties will watch the cars evolve to the point where you're all looking at the data and you’re seeing the same data. It's in everybody's interest that we get the right result now.”
