First SuperUte completes shakedown

The Mitsubishi Triton that will be raced by V8 Utes regular Craig Dontas next season was run behind closed doors at the circuit last Friday, completing approximately 50 kilometres of running under the watchful eyes of the Supercars technical team and SuperUtes consultant Ross Stone.

According to the official Supercars website, the majority of the running was centred around tuning the engine with electronic management specialists MoTec, before Bathurst winner Paul Morris put the Triton through its paces with a number of hot laps in the afternoon.

“We’d had the Mitsubishi engine on the dyno and have done some basic tuning so the shakedown was an extension of that, working closely with Motec,” Supercars’ sporting and technical director David Stuart told the category’s official website.

“It was also a good shakedown for everything that had been designed and manufactured for the car, including the rear axle housing, the braking system, front wheel hubs and internals.

“That all worked as it should but the engine is completely stock at the moment so it was the very first part of engine tuning, which there is some work to go on.

“The tyre that we have it on (Yokohama high-performance street tyre) may not be the tyre they end up racing with but even that hung in well for the period we were on track.”

Testing proper is expected to kick off later this month, at which point the Stone-built Ford Ranger will hit the track for the first time, before other homologated models join in.

“We’ve got a couple of small issues that we’re working with on the Ford at the moment but it’s not far away,” added Stuart.

“The first Mazda BT-50 is currently at Pace Innovations and just about finished and after that the build of the build of the Toyota will start.

“We aim to have the first Isuzu D-Max and Holden Colorado shortly after that, which make up the six vehicles we committed to homologating ahead of next season.

“If someone is to bring a Nissan Navara or VW Amarok or something else, we’ll deal with those as they come, but we can’t guarantee any outside of those first six models will be available as a kit to race at the first round next year.”