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Supercars revises Gen3 testing timeline

Supercars has revised the start date for testing of its Gen3 prototypes.

General Motors Camaro ZL1 of Jamie Whincup, Triple Eight Race Engineering Holden

General Motors Camaro ZL1 of Jamie Whincup, Triple Eight Race Engineering Holden

Supercars

The Aussie category had been working towards kicking off the testing process of the Triple Eight-build Camaro and Dick Johnson Racing-built Mustang next month.

However it concedes that now won't be the case, the focus shifting to an "as soon as possible" approach to testing, and October the new nominated target for a public unveiling of the cars.

According to Supercars' Head of Motorsport Adrian Burgess, the revised timeline is largely courtesy of logistical issues with parts coming from overseas.

"It’s always as soon as possible," said Burgess. "It’s hard for us to give a precise date this far away but we’re hopeful that we’ll be on-track in October. We’re hopeful that it will be at an event.

"We are struggling a little bit with shipping, with getting parts, with getting materials for the composites and for the manufacturers to build the parts. So this is a little bit of a fluid situation and we’re relying on American and European manufacturers for some of the components.

"Equally the race teams are away; we’ve just asked them to do a double-header, so actual work in putting the prototypes together has probably slowed down a little bit this week while we’re all away.

"The two cars are coming together fairly well but we’ve still got lots of bodywork and things which are in production and some of those parts have eight, nine, 10-week lead times to make them.

"I can’t say it’s 9:15 on October the first or October the second, we can’t give you that much detail this far out."

When pressed on whether the August target has been dumped Burgess added: “With everything that is in front of us at the moment, it would be highly unlikely it’s next month.

"We certainly haven’t taken our foot off the gas, both homologation teams and Supercars technical department along with all the partners outside of that group are working flat out to bring this together as quickly as we can."

But Burgess hit back at suggestions the project had been hit by another delay.

“I wouldn’t call it a delay," he said.

"These things are very fluid. I’ve introduced a million cars over my career – do they actually land on the day that someone wants them to at the start of a programme or a year earlier? No they don’t.

"This thing is fluid and we’re dealing with a very complex set of parameters out of our control with COVID, with Melbourne and its lockdowns, with Sydney and its lockdowns, with supply chain issues all around the world that are known and everyone can see them.

"We’re not making any of this up, it’s pretty evident what is going on outside of our control and around the world, and these are having impacts on how quick we can put it together.

"Yes, you try and set your best target but everyone has to be understanding and appreciative that some of these things are just completely out of our control."

The competitive debut for the Gen3 cars has already been pushed back to midway through the 2022 season due to delays in the design and development phase.

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