GM alliance 'starting to pay dividends' despite results dip

General Motors' 'Team Chevy' alliance is starting to reap fruit for Camaro teams amid a quiet start to 2026, according to PremiAir Racing driver Declan Fraser.

Key to GM's return of serve following Triple Eight's move to Ford, GM slotted Team 18 into homologation duties and trumpeted an alliance across its Camaro teams.

Team 18, Matt Stone Racing and PremiAir Racing bought into the new alliance, which sees each team sharing set-up information via a GM-led database on race weekends. Erebus Motorsport, meanwhile, is "doing our own thing."

The weight of results have been in Ford's favour through two rounds: of 21 available podium results in 2026 so far, just one has been achieved by Chevrolet. That came in the form of a surprise Race 2 win for Anton De Pasquale and Team 18 in Sydney.

Not including the Race 2 result, De Pasquale has a 9.7 race average, having been taken out of a podium position in the Sydney, before Team 18 came back to earth in Melbourne.

In contrast, Ford has 19 podiums and six wins, while Ryan Wood put Toyota on the board with third place in Race 5 at Albert Park.

De Pasquale is lead Camaro driver in fifth overall, ahead of impressive MSR recruit Jack Le Brocq in sixth. The next Camaro driver is David Reynolds in 12th. PremiAir Racing duo Jayden Ojeda and Fraser are 16th and 18th, while MSR rookie Zach Bates and both Erebus drivers have been undone by incidents across the first two rounds.

GM's performance has duly been under the microscope since Melbourne, yet De Pasquale was wary of rushing into a premature parity debate just two rounds into the season.

Supercars data analyst Scott Sinclair, meanwhile, was pragmatic given the relative inexperience of the Chevrolet driver crop, writing: "62% of the Camaros on the grid have a rookie driver, compared to only 36% of the Mustangs. These numbers are clearly stacked in Ford's favour.

"That's no excuse, though, and with the rookie talent in some of the Camaros, they should expect to be more competitive as the season progresses."

Fraser, who is two rounds into life with PremiAir and GM, believes the new data-sharing model is slowly starting to gain momentum.

"I feel like as a whole, the entire GM outfit now with the new way that we're going about our racing together, we should be able to get the product a little bit better than before,” Fraser told Supercars.com.

“It's very good. There's so many resources now you can practically see what everyone's doing. It's good that those onboard are very onboard with it. I think the program wouldn't work if there was somebody who wasn't fully onboard.

“But all of the teams, all the drivers, engineers, team owners, everyone have been really open to the idea and it's something that they've done around the world with GM.

“Now that everyone in Australia is going down that route and really leaning into the program, it's starting to pay dividends now. Everyone's trying to figure out in the first couple rounds how it's gonna work, what it actually looks like, and everything like that.

"But now you can already tell, just from the meetings that we have outside of the race track, that everyone’s working as a whole corporation of GM rather than just intra-team, they're gelling a lot better, which is good to see.”

Fraser's comments could be of some solace to GM fans, given Camaros claimed one of nine podiums across the three Taupō races last season.

For what it's worth, De Pasquale qualified on the front row for the finale, only to be undone by a first corner mistake, followed by an error in the pits.

GM has made waves in recent days, poaching Penrite Racing Technical Director Grant McPherson in a yet to be confirmed role. It comes after long-time Triple Eight tech boss Jeromy Moore also joined GM, later signing onto Cadillac's LMDh program.

The McPherson news has fanned the flames on the rivalry between GM and Ford, with Penrite Racing owner Stephen Grove firing a pointed message back to the bowtie brigade.

Team 18 Team Principal Adrian Burgess hailed the McPherson news, telling MotorRacing 360: "It's another clear indication that GM are invested in what we're doing and they're going to put the resources behind the program, not necessarily behind one team.

"We're all trying to work together, we have got a very collaborative approach as to how we're going about it and there's a lot of information sharing, but having the likes of 'Shippy' (McPherson) and 'JJ' (Moore) sat there in the background supplementing the program is only going to be a good thing for us in the long run.

"These things don't change overnight, there's no silver bullets, but having those guys and knowing they're in your corner is a great thing."