Barry Ryan praises Supercars for parity efforts

Erebus boss Barry Ryan believes Supercars should be given “huge credit” for getting the Gen3 Camaro and Mustang as close to parity as they are thus far.

While Chevrolet teams, Erebus Motorsport chief among them, continued to enjoy the lion’s share of podiums in the most recent event of the season at Wanneroo Raceway, the Ford Mustangs were arguably not disgraced in performance.

Grove Racing’s David Reynolds, for example, missed pole position by a margin of just 0.0404s when Will Brown was fastest qualifier for Race 8 in his Erebus Camaro.

Speaking after Practice in Perth, where Reynolds was the fastest of all in the sole, 90-minute session and fellow Ford driver Todd Hazelwood was next best in the Blanchard Racing Team entry, Ryan said Supercars is deserving of praise.

“I would say – and probably not many people have said – a huge credit to Supercars’ technical for what they’ve done,” he remarked.

“They got the cars very, very close and to have the CoG within two millimetres is a big credit to them, and the homologation teams.

“And the engines are really, really close, and obviously the little mapping change that the Ford needed, that’s just stuff for driveability, which we’ve heard about.

“Parity is what we all want, he added.

“We don’t want Camaros all up there and Fords down the back.”

Camaro drivers did fill seven of the nine podium positions on offer in the three races at Wanneroo although, from a Ford perspective, that was a slight improvement on the 10 from 12 at Albert Park before time penalties for Ford drivers James Courtney and Will Davison.

Qualifying in Perth was a more even split, with five Mustangs in the top 10 in the session which set the starting grid for Race 7 and six each in those for Races 8 and 9, with a Mustang on at least the second row every time.

Still, Tickford Racing’s Cameron Waters quipped that he was racing his Mustang in ‘Class B’, and it is not unlikely that there will be further revisions to the Ford engine this year.

The next event of the 2023 Repco Supercars Championship is the Ned Whisky Tasmania SuperSprint at Symmons Plains on May 19-21.