Ryan Walkinshaw confident ahead of biggest test yet
B-spec engine delivered perfect result for Toyota fleet at The Bend
Chaz Mostert/Fabian Coulthard voted Bathurst favourite by fans
A confident Ryan Walkinshaw is keeping his "fingers crossed" that the Toyota engine can do the distance on Bathurst Sunday, following a remarkable Supercars enduro debut.
Walkinshaw TWG Racing GR Supras claimed a stunning 1-3 result at the AirTouch 500 at The Bend, with Chaz Mostert and Fabian Coulthard combining to win by nearly 20 seconds.
In the wake of the resounding victory, a debate surged to the fore: could Toyota win Bathurst on debut?
Ford star Matt Payne, who won last year's Great Race, suggested the Supra could be the car to beat, despite Mostert feeling bullish after The Bend. In a Supercars.com poll, fans tipped Mostert/Coulthard as the favourite.
"Do they? F**k yeah, let's go," Walkinshaw smiled, when told fans voted the #1 Supra as the Bathurst favourite.
Regardless, the question over reliability will remain right through Sunday, despite the upgraded 'B-spec' delivering a perfect performance at The Bend.
When asked by Supercars.com if there was uncertainty, Walkinshaw replied: "No, it doesn't mean that there's necessarily a concern about it, but we're not gonna get ahead of ourselves.
"These things are complicated beasts, right? And because we don't get a lot of testing, there's no way we can really validate it.
“We spent a fair bit of time doing our previous A-spec engine, and every single week there was a new change that had to happen, either by us or by Toyota or by the sport enforcing a different change or changing the rules going into even the first round of the season.
“So it was pretty frustrating, and then obviously the result of that is that it meant that a lot of our validation testing was kind of obsolete because there was so many changes made after it.
"We ended up going into the season with an engine that wasn’t validated to the standards that we would have wanted to due to so many changes after we did all the testing.
“So you never really know what you've got until you're actually racing it unless you go and test it."
Mostert's DNF at Queensland Raceway, in what was the competitive debut of the B-spec engine, was a bitter footnote on what was a promising first weekend for the new-spec motor.
Come The Bend, and all five Supras not only reached the finish, but showed supreme speed, with the Andre Heimgartner/Bryce Fullwood Brad Jones Racing car missing out on a top five following an early-race penalty.
Amid a reduction in testing, the Toyota has largely been proven at race events throughout the season, making the car's strong results — four wins, four poles and 11 podiums — all the more impressive.
"We've had two events now [with the B-spec engine]. There was one small issue in the first round with this B-spec engine [in Ipswich], but that wasn't engine-based, it was something else. So we managed to resolve that at The Bend," Walkinshaw continued.
"All five Supras didn't have any issues, so fingers crossed we've managed to get rid of most of the issues that we had previously this season. But again, whenever you change an engine, you can end up putting pressure somewhere else or having a failure point in another part of the engine.
“So, we never really know until you actually put some k's on the engines. But what we are comfortable with is that we've done the best we could do to try and resolve the issues, the known issues that we've had this season. And if there's future issues that we're unaware of, you know, if we knew them, we would fix them already. So we have to find out.
“But we're pretty confident so far with what we've created, and as I said, fingers crossed as we put more k's on it, the reliability maintains."
