It seems that the spectre of parity has been perennially at the feast of motor racing since the very beginning and in the Australian Touring Car Championship since day dot. The current whingefest by Ford teams about the Chevy Camaro having a clear and obvious advantage over their Mustang, is the same as Ford whiging about Monaro, Holden whinging about Falcon, Holden and Ford whinging about RX-7 and Bluebird, Nissan whinging about 240, Nissan whinging about Sierra, Holden and Ford whinging about GTR, Holden and Ford spending 25 years whining about minor differences about Commodore and Falcon, with occasional whinges from Nissan and Volvo and Mercedes, and Holden whinging about Mustang. Is there anything new under the sun?
So called "Gen-3" Supercars are in response to the fact that the Falcon which suffered an existence failure, was replaced by the S550 Mustang which when wrapped over the top of the Falcon underpinnings for Car Of The Future/Gen-2 looked goofier than Mickey's friend riding a surfboard right foot forward. When Holden also suffered an existence failure, the teams then scrambled for any kind of relevance and decided upon something which was supposed to retain the DNA of Supercars; while at the same time betraying everything that went before. The Camaro isn't even on sale in Australia and the Mustang except for one month in 2016 has never outsold the worst sales months figures for Falcon.
In trying to hatch a new formula, Ford went with a 5.4L version of their Coyote engine, while Chevrolet just went to the GM racing parts bin an pulled out a 5.7L small block derivative. On this point, an engine which has had no practical race development versus an engine which has been racing continuously for more than 50 years, was never going to be a fair fight. Also in trying to hatch a new formula, the two camps went their own way to get whatever aero kit they could homologated and of course this was going to result in a blatantly unfair fight, one way or the other; even Blind Freddy could see this.
I know that I am but a poor keyboard warrior smashing text into the world, and that as part of the chorus of howling morons who don't make any technical decisions whatsoever, then how come even I could have see this? If you are not running a spec series, which Supercars is not any more, then minor differences in equipment will be magnified.
Ford drivers are generally complaining about a lack of aero compared with the Chevy drivers. I assume that because the chassis and undertray is the same, then this advantage is being caused by the airflow over the top of the cars. I suspect that this is likely caused by the styling and packaging decisions made by the car markers; as they are made without regards for motor racing.
The Chevy presents a brickish wall to the air in front; then as the air spills over the roof, it then trails off a squarer boot lid than what the Mustang has. This means that the Chevy, is doing a better job of having the air interact with the rear wing, and the flatter boot lid means that the underside diffusers are probably more effective. Meanwhile, the Mustang has more of a rounded bootlid; which means that the air is more likely to be more laminar as it flows over the cars. This is excellent for a road car where the object is to reduce wind resistance but awful if the object is to get the air flow to interact with the rear wing and diffuser.
Drivers like Chaz Mostert and Cam Waters have been complaining that the Mustang doesn't feel like it is grounded at the back and that there is little effect from the rear end aero kit of the car. This is ironic given that Walkinshaw Andretti United switched from Holden to Ford, because they probably guessed that there would be an advantage. This would be hard to guess given that both cars were blank slates at the time.
If I were Grand Poohbah and Lord High Everything Else, then I would have called for a solution which NASCAR uses; which is excellent. That is that the chassis and undertray be identical and that the glasshouse also be identical. Differences to the glasshouse are purely cosmetic and the differences in the shape of the aft windows is irrelevant as the C-pillars are identical. The point of difference is the cosmetic differences between the grille and light clusters front and rear. I would have also mandated a control KRE engine because let's be perfectly honest here, the punter watching the racing from the outside honestly couldn't give a thousand revs, what the technical specs actually are. As long as race cars sound like race cars, then people are happy.
The thing is, as the Supercars themselves are bespoke bits of kit, and the panels can be pulled off and replaced, then admitting that Gen3.1 has been a parity nightmare is still an option and the above suggestion can be implemented. The cars are already something that isn't for sale in Australia versus a car which in this guise also isn't for sale in Australia. I would even go so far as to say that a common glasshouse with common aero and only changing the grilles and light clusters, would allow other brands to compete. If say Brad Jones racing got backing from Audi, then it wouldn't be that difficult a process to get the front and rear grilles and light clusters approved.
I should at this point say that my rather worthless opinion here, has been shaped with reference to other series like GT3, Super GT both GT500 and GT300, LMP2, NASCAR's three series of Cup, Xfinity, and Trucks, as well as iRacing. For that last series where literally nothing is real, graphics can be changed to make a car look like anything and I have seen such illustrious car brands as ZIL, Trabant, Lil' Tykes, Tonka, Packard, and Breville, in various online racing series. If it sounds dumb to suggest that video games should influence real world motor racing, bear in mind that all commercially built cars in the world are now built on CAD, and shaped and edited before even one of them gets to be in the real world. I would even go so far as to say that abandoned intellectual property such as the XA-XC Falcon and the HG Monaro, would also be excellent choices for a Supercars team to go racing with; if not Supercars then TA2.
This whole parity saga, could have been foreseen, should have been foreseen, and like a classic tragedy, Supercars proceeded anyway. If you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes and time after time and again and again the parity wars prove to be a stupid game. Supercars chose this.
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