Expert Analysis: Did parity tweaks help Camaros, or was it a perfect storm?

This is an exclusive post-event Supercars.com column by championship-winning Race Engineer Scott Sinclair. Sinclair will preview and debrief each round of the 2026 Repco Supercars Championship from his own perspective.

The Symmons Plains layout is so unique that it's probably not surprising we saw such varied results. If you predicted the weekend would be hard to predict, you certainly got it right. If you claim to have predicted the three race winners, I don’t believe you.

Heimgartner’s pressure record

Andre Heimgartner winning for Brad Jones Racing was a welcome sight on Saturday afternoon and a great reward for the BJR team who claimed their first win in a Toyota.

I loved my time working with Andre at Nissan. While he’s quiet and somewhat unassuming, he’s seriously talented, and the kind of driver you find yourself genuinely wanting to help succeed.

For me, the highlight of his race-winning performance was his ability to hold off serious pressure from Feeney throughout the first half of the race. During the first 20 laps, Feeney applied the longest period of sustained pressure for the lead of a race that we’ve seen in the last 10 years. The average gap to Heimgartner was only 0.3 seconds across those 20 laps. A single mistake would’ve seen Heimgartner’s race win disappear.

Once they reached the pit stop cycle, the highly rated BJR pit crew did what they’ve done consistently for years, executing a flawless tyre change, giving Heimgartner some breathing space, and helping him cruise to victory.

Where did Toyota’s Saturday speed go?

At the airport Sunday night, I overheard three different conversations from fans discussing the same thing: How can Toyota dominate Saturday and be so far off the pace on Sunday? It’s a valid question, but one that unfortunately doesn’t have a simple answer.

A common accusation is that engineers can’t help themselves; they make set-up changes to try and make a fast car even faster, only to make it slower. While this certainly does occur, the opposite equally applies. Leave a fast car untouched and you’re assuming none of the other teams will improve theirs, a brave assumption in this pit lane.

In my view, the biggest contributor between Toyota’s Saturday and Sunday performance was the significantly different qualifying conditions day-to-day.

Saturday qualifying started with a wet track that continued to dry out across the two qualifying sessions dominated by the Toyotas. The gap between first and 10th in both those sessions was 0.6 seconds, twice as big as the average gap over the last decade. On a wet or drying track, tyre temperature and phasing play a more significant role. There are bigger rewards from getting that right than normal.

Come Sunday, on a fully dry track, the gap between first and 10th shrunk back to a normal 0.26 seconds. This meant qualifying was more about car set-up and outright speed than tyre management.

Whether the Toyota teams changed their car set-ups between Saturday and Sunday or not, it was a different ball game on Sunday. The reality is that they don’t yet have enough data to know exactly when to tweak the set-up or leave it alone.

Stage 1 of the Camaro revival?

We saw signs of a resurgent Camaro throughout the weekend in Tasmania. Anton De Pasquale finished the weekend third and Jayden Ojeda eighth overall, both recording their best weekend results since joining their respective teams. David Reynolds also returned to a sprint race podium for the first time in three years.

Was it the parity tweaks that helped the Camaros or simply that the circuit layout was more suited to them? It’s likely both given the brake instability issue that’s dominated their performance is arguably the most important handling trait at Symmons Plains.

We’ll certainly learn more at Hidden Valley though, where braking stability is important, but not at the expense of any front grip.

Kostecki’s dark patch

It's inevitable that at some point during a season of 30-plus races, luck will turn against you. Brodie Kostecki is right in the middle of that at the moment, having seen his championship lead disappear largely due to things out of his control.

Taking a wider view though, I see this as a small stutter as opposed to a tumble. There’s nothing to suggest it’s cause for alarm, in fact quite the opposite when you consider 12 months ago at the same event in Tasmania, he and teammate Will Davison finished the weekend last and second last overall.

Kostecki has made significant gains this year and is currently the number one ranked qualifier, halving his average from 8.2 last year to 4.1. His speed in the races has also improved significantly year-on-year, moving from eighth to third for Race Pace.

While the frustration is real, the weight of numbers suggests he still sits comfortably alongside Broc Feeney and Matt Payne as the three clear championship favourites.

Wood’s pit stop frustration

Ryan Wood’s frustration at the time he lost in pit lane was evident during Sunday’s coverage. It was the culmination of a weekend where pit stop issues dropped him down the order in each of the races.

Overall, Wood spent 14.3 seconds longer in the pit lane than the fastest car (Payne), an average loss of nearly three seconds per pit stop. It took the shine off what was otherwise a reasonable weekend, having qualified for all three races inside the top eight.

His Walkinshaw TWG pit crew improved significantly throughout last year, excelling with Chaz Mostert under the pressure of the Finals. With some time between now and Darwin, regaining that consistency will no doubt be a focus.

Scott Sinclair is one of the most respected voices in pit lane, famously engineering James Courtney to the 2010 championship with Dick Johnson Racing. Sinclair also spent stints at the Holden Racing Team and Kelly Racing, spent time on the Supercars Commission, and recently joined Supercars as a data analyst.

The views in this article do not necessarily express the opinions of Supercars, teams or drivers.