‘Around in circles for the months’: Whincup blames Ford for last-minute Gen3 sign-off

Triple Eight managing director Jamie Whincup has blamed Ford for needlessly delaying the Gen3 rules sign-off until just hours before the first round of the season.

Supercars has been preparing for years to introduce an all-new car design that the series hopes will improve the quality of racing, but the Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang weren’t homologated until 7pm last night, less than 24 hours before scrutineering was due to begin for this weekend’s Newcastle 500 at midday today.

Homologation, which seals the design and performance characteristics of the two cars, was delayed by months of arguments about whether the two models of car had achieved performance parity.

Much of the debate took place behind the scenes, but Ford Performance boss Mark Rushbrook took the Blue Oval’s criticism public last month by declaring he was “not satisfied that parity has been reached either for engine or aero”, leading to several volleys between teams and drivers in the opposing manufacturer camps.

Eventually the Supercars organised a last-minute vehicle control aerodynamic test (VCAT) last week, resulting in a small boost to the Camaro’s front downforce load.

But Whincup, whose Triple Eight squad is responsible for the Chevrolet homologation program, said that the modifications were minor and that the cars were ready to be signed off late last year.

“We achieved [parity] in VCAT 1,” he told Fox Sports. “That was proven at VCAT 2, because there was one small change made to the Camaro — we’re talking four or five kilos of downforce or drag; we’re talking very, very small numbers and small percentages.

“Unfortunately we just had to talk about it and go around in circles for the months in between October and yesterday to get sign-off from Ford on the car to start racing.”

The seven-time Supercars champion said he suspected Ford had either misunderstood the testing results or was being duped by performance data generated outside the official VCAT sessions.

“We’ve got to remember we’ve got a homologation process which means both cars at a certain speed have the same front and rear downforce and similar drag,” he said.

“They either weren’t reading the numbers correctly or they were putting emphasis on white noise, basically.

“Supercars instigated some unofficial testing, and once you start doing that — where the cars aren’t quarantined, so to speak, and set up exactly the same to do proper tests — all you do is create a heap of white noise.

One side was reading into that white noise quite heavily and therefore delayed the process three months as a result.”

Whincup said that included the all-in pre-season test, where much was made about Camaro cars locking out 11 of the top 12 spots on the time sheet in what some considered a sign of a massive performance mismatch.

“The biggest issue on that day was the weight,” he said. “The cars were not paritised from the weight perspective. There was no minimum weight set, so some cars were up to 50 kilos heavier than others — 50 kilos is like being in another category.

“So once again, if you want to read into all this unofficial testing and numbers, then of course you can create a lot of white noise for yourself, but we certainly didn’t get into any of that, because we know that those numbers are completely irrelevant.

“We were ready to sign off on the car after VCAT and any other stage up until yesterday, but it was the other side that was delaying it.”

The lengthy sign-off process has meant both Triple Eight and the Ford homologation team, Dick Johnson Racing, have had to remain involved in the homologation program for months longer than expected while simultaneously competing in last year’s championship and preparing its own cars for the upcoming campaign.

“We signed up and committed to the process thinking we were going to design some bodywork, go to VCAT and do two or three days and then it’s done,” he said. “But with the other side not signing off on their car, they delayed and pushed the process out and made it so much more involved than what it should’ve been from VCAT 1, which was last October, I believe, all the way through to just last week.

“The cars just got signed off yesterday. So from October to yesterday we have had hours and hours of time spent trying to get this homologation process correct, which was not planned for.”

“Of course on top of that we’ve got to build our own cars, like every other team, plus on top of that we designed the whole car for Supercars to roll out. So it’s been unbelievably challenging for the staff at Triple Eight.”

But Whincup, who took the reins at Triple Eight from Roland Dane at the start of last year, said he was proud of the way his workforce had measured up to the challenge over the last 12 months.

“I can’t say how good a job they’ve all done,” he said. “They’ve all just dug deep, got it done, and the Gen3 project is by far the proudest project second to none. It’s our biggest achievement without doubt.”