Triple Eight Race Engineering has reported that following its recent two day aerodynamic testing at Stanthorpe Airport, Australia, the car sustained damage to numerous panels caused by stone-chips from the runway. The upshot of this temporary postponement has resulted in the first Accredited Manufacturer test day being moved from Thursday this week to after the Gold Coast 600.
Despite the, largely, superficial damage to the car, the team is pleased with how the next-generation Australian touring car has performed so far.
“The car is in a very good window of where we thought it would be, which is positive, and the changes we were making were matching the downforce numbers that we were predicting, so we feel like we have a good base car and a good bunch of tools to be able to tune the aero balance come the official Supercars aero test,” explained head designer and Car #88 race engineer David Cauchi. “There are a lot of people who’ve worked very hard behind the scenes, as well as going racing, so it was extremely rewarding to see the car on track. It’s come together really nicely, so it’s very satisfying, but the job’s not done yet – what really matters is how the car performs on track, which we’ll see in the coming months.”
Triple Eight engineers traveled around southern Queensland and northern New South Wales inspecting potential tracks, with Stanthorpe proving to be the most suitable. However the track’s loose surface caused some damage to the car’s exterior.
“The track temp at the airfield was quite hot and that meant that the sticky race tyres that we run on were ripping up some of the gravel on the tarmac of the runway and basically stone-blasted a lot of the panels on the car,” Cauchi continued. “All the damage is cosmetic, nothing that we can’t repair, but with the tight turnaround it was already going to be a really big push to do this test and prepare properly for Bathurst. With the extra workload of repairing the panels we’ve decided to postpone it until late October.”
