Triple Eight's ominous start, Toyotas stick to plan in morning of statements

The first half of the Destination NSW Sydney Test Day may not uncover the secrets and findings teams want, but the four-hour hit out has offered a glimpse at 2026.

Will Brown clocked the fastest lap of the session in his new #888 Red Bull Ampol Ford Mustang, ahead of Penrite Racing's Matt Payne and Matt Stone Racing rookie Zach Bates.

Held in sweltering conditions in Western Sydney, the morning session was held on the 2.8km Druitt Circuit, following remedial works at Turn 8.

With a shorter layout comes with trepidation for some, given teams like Triple Eight, Walkinshaw TWG Racing and Brad Jones Racing have the most to lose learning their new packages.

However, as was the case at shakedowns last week, Triple Eight ran to its own plan and recorded the first and fifth most laps of the entire field on Wednesday morning, Broc Feeney and Will Brown two of seven drivers to record more than 200km of running.

“It was a busy session. All the engineers working through stuff kept me busy," Triple Eight Team Manager Mark Dutton told Supercars.com.

"You're just seeing what you've got underneath you re. comparing what your tools used to do, if you do a roll centre change on the front, what did it do on the Camaro compared to what did it do on the Mustang?

"You've got to develop and understand your toolkit for the Mustang now, for multiple reasons to know the sensitivities of the Mustang, but then also to know how much of previous year's data you can look at."

In contrast, the five Toyota GR Supras logged the five fewest mileage totals in the session, with reigning champion Chaz Mostert the top Supra in 16th. Mostert’s 46 laps was the most for any Supra, some 43 down on Feeney's haul.

Save for an electrical issue for Andre Heimgartner, there were positive signs down at BJR, which only completed and shook down its new cars last week.

“The car feels really good,” BJR recruit Cameron Hill told Supercars.com.

“It's really early. The test plan had to be changed a little bit, obviously, with the change of the circuit to the short track today. So, we sort of just treated today a bit more like an extended shakedown, just running through a few things on the new car.

“The day went really smooth. So, we'll try and get a bit more information tomorrow on the full track.”

Team owner Jones added in a social media video:  "We ran through a lot of system checks with the cars today. We had an electrical problem with Andre's car. The other boys did practice starts, drop and goes through the pits.

"So we had a lot of things that we haven't done with the Toyotas that we needed to do. Definitely not where I'd like to be with times, but we'll see what happens tomorrow night when we run on the full track and everyone's going around.

"Other than Andre's car, no issues at all."

Cars will return to the track on Thursday for Session 2 on the Gardner Circuit from 5:30pm local time. Supercars.com will offer live timing and coverage during the session.

2026 Destination NSW Sydney Test Day

Morning session, Wednesday February 18

Laps per car