SUPERCARS has reiterated its plans to conduct barometric pressure engine testing prior to next month’s Repco Bathurst 1000.
The matter of altitude impact on the performance of different engines hijacked a fair chunk of last year’s Great Race focus, before rain came to the rescue and set the stage for an all-time squabble for the Peter Brock Trophy.
Ford had long suspected its Coyote DOHC was more adversely affected by the Mount Panorama altitude than Chevrolet’s pushrod, and a Supercars study supported that.
However, regulatory and procedural hurdles meant that recommended one-off tweaks were unable to be pushed through, prompting a Dick Johnson Racing protest that would be dismissed. There was also opposition on the basis that only the inlet impact had been examined and not the less-imperative exhaust side.
Supercars has cleared the path for this year by adding altitude impact to the championship’s official engine parity pillars.
However, the barometric pressure testing still needs to actually occur, with there now being only 40 days until Bathurst race day.
“We’ve done the inlet side. The exhaust side is the more difficult part to do,” Edwards told V8 Sleuth.
“The fan and everything is all sitting there, it’s just now we have physically got to do the testing but it’s trying to find a slot to actually do it.”
Supercars has also refrained from heading to Austria for AVL transient dyno engine testing, until the Toyota specification is finalised.
All this comes against a backdrop of the category looking to tune-up its overall race-based parity trigger system for next season, having found its new-for-2026 formula to be too sensitive.
The Ipswich Super440 sparked the latest need for parity investigations, although there is no requirement on Supercars to make a change unless a deficit can be proven. There is yet to be an update on whether that will occur for either the Chevrolet or Toyota prior to The Bend.
“Everybody signed up to this for just a one-year deal. Obviously it was a new triggering system,” said Edwards.
“We think we can make some improvements to it for next year and we’re doing that work in the background and running alternate systems.”
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