Supercars teams taking on Race 2 of Gen3 ‘much wiser’

Supercars teams will tackle the second race of the Gen3 era today “much wiser” than they had been thanks to the experienced gained from the first.

Competitors started Race 1 at the Thrifty Newcastle 500 without a swathe of key data, such as tyre degradation, fuel economy, and even the flow rates for the new fuel rigging equipment.

That made optimising a strategy extremely difficult but, armed with real-world data, they can afford to be bolder today.

“A hundred percent, tomorrow will be a different day because we know a lot more about degradation and stuff like that,” Tickford Racing Team Principal Tim Edwards told Speedcafe.com.

“You’re much wiser after [Race 1] so you go into [Race 2] with a lot more facts in your head that you didn’t have when you started [yesterday’s] race.”

Tickford’s lead car provisionally finished third in the hands of Cameron Waters in Race 1, a result which could yet change depending on the outcome of a stewards hearing held in the hours following that contest.

Waters could be made the winner in the final classification if the Triple Eight Race Engineering cars are disqualified for an alleged breach of technical regulations regarding the installation of driver cooling systems in its Camaros which finished one-two courtesy of Shane van Gisbergen and Broc Feeney.

Speaking before confirmation that Tickford and Walkinshaw Andretti United had protested those entries, Triple Eight Team Principal Jamie Whincup highlighted the importance of learning from the first race for the new Gen3 cars.

“We just need to recover well, learn from what we experienced from the first race run we’ve done in these cars,” he told Speedcafe.com.

“So we’ll go over the cars, we’ll try to learn from what else happened in pit lane, and as always – that’s what every team does – just try to get better for tomorrow.”

Qualifying for Race 2 at the Newcastle East Street Circuit starts at 11:15 local time/AEDT.