The introduction of the Gen-3 Supercar has been nothing short of horrific. The cars themselves have had driver cooling issues and there have been risks of the cars catching on fire. From the fans' point of view though, this year's season has basically boiled down to a two-team contest between Erebus Motorsports and Triple Eight Engineering, with Ford teams picking off maybe 1 of 20 odd wins in the year. If Gen-3 was supposed to provide close racing, it colossally fails to deliver with every single race basically falling to either of those two teams.
It shows as well. Three-time Shane Van Gisbergen wants out, as does Will Brown, and it can not be very much fun for anyone who knows that they best that they can hope for on any given weekend, is fifth. In one fell swoop, we have returned to the days of 1992, with this year's GTR being the Camaro. If you don't have one of those, give up and go home.
It didn't have to be this way. As the cars are bespoke and literally could have been anything, Supercars' management could have decided that the teams be reined in by Balance of Performance regulations, or decided from the outset to make the field level but they did not. Instead we have a 5.4L production based V8 going against a racing crate motor 5.7L V8, and they've expected them to try and fight around the whims of parity directives.
On top of this, Supercars' management could have decided that the cars themselves could have been identical in profile save for the front and rear taillight clusters; in the same way that NASCAR does when it approves new models for its series. The front and rear taillight clusters on Gen-5 NASCAR were merely stickers; on Gen-6 they were moulded sections; and Gen-7 actually holds the underlying pieces to an even tighter bound box. Supercars' management did not. In an effort to make the cars look more like the road going counterparts, they allowed the manufacturers more freedom; which is fine from a marketing perspective but awful if the cars then have to attach common aero pieces.
The complaint from the Mustang drivers is that relative to the Camaro drivers, they feel that they have a lack of rear grip, which is likely predicated by the rear wing being ineffective and the under-car aero pieces, such as the diffuser, also not being as effective as on the Camaro. The drivers are the best feedback monitors (they are the ones who drive the car after all), and I think that they are probably right. The reason why, can be readily determined by looking at the cars themselves.
That rear wing and rear diffuser are common pieces. As you can see though, the rear profile of the Mustang from the B-pillar back, is a very sleek and swoopy line. What I think is happening which is different to the Camaro, is because the rear of the Mustang more closely resembles that of the road car than the Camaro does, it is in fact cleaner through the air. My impression by looking at it, is that air travels over the rear window and past the B-pillar, and then spills out under the rear wing; very very efficiently. I think that this means that the Mustang is probably about 6km/h faster in a straight line at the top end but that minimal advantage is utterly destroyed when going through any corner.
What I think is happening is that that wing is actually out in orphaned air and while it acts a little bit, the minimal suck force pulling it down, is woeful compared with the Camaro; which has a less efficient rear end but more effective rear end aero as a result.
The other thing which immediately strikes me is just how high off the ground that rear diffuser is. that looks to have as much ground clearance as the rear bumper of the normal passenger car. Again, because the diffuser is so high up, I wonder if in fact it is actually doing anything meaningful. If the Camaro's diffuser is closer to the ground, then that same part will work better, and the suck force which is generated by creating a lower pressure area underneath the car, will be higher.
When engineers design cars for the road, they are not looking at downforce as their main objective. They are looking for a more slippery car through the air because the slipperier the car is, the less petrol it will use. You can recreate this design problem, the next time that you are in a car by making your hand play as a dolphin, the next time you are on the highway.
When Supercars' management wanted to set out the conditions for the bound box of the Gen-3 Supercar, they wanted something when would be skatier than the Gen-2 car because "the fans" wanted to see cars slide around more. It seems that they got precisely that with the S650 Mustang but not the Camaro, whose engineers may have pulled a little bit of a swifty on Supercars' management.
There is a an elephant not in the room but lumbering over the horizon. That is that Ford Motor Co. have just released their Ford Mustang GT3 for use in GT3 racing around the world. I think that this may have struck the first death knell for Supercars. Quite frankly I do not see Ford wanting to drop very much more coin into a project, if it means that they get their but kicked every week, which is what is happening now. Ford have already announced that they will be going for a bigger prize at Le Mans, as well as other GT3 racing series such as the Blancpain series in Belgium and France, the DTM in Germany, and GT300 in Super GT in Japan.
If this is true and Ford gives up, then the Supercars has maybe the 2024, 2025 and 2026 seasons to think about it. 2023 is practically a dead rubber and if Fords are made to look silly at Bathurst, then they will see it as a dead loss.
I am in two minds about this. On one hand I think that this might hasten some kind of Gen-3.5 Supercar in a hurry, which might be good; while on the other hand I can see that GT3 is clearly a cheaper option. As it stands, Supercars' management has closed the shop to privateer teams and they have taken their money elsewhere accordingly. This is like living in 1992 combined with 2021 all over again. In the mean time, the Ford teams are perpetually being punished for running the Mustang and I do no know how long their patience will last.
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