Ford, Chevrolet and Toyota battle it out at The Bend. Image: InSyde Media
Ten cars have been sent to Dunlop Motorsport’s Melbourne facility for Centre of Gravity evaluations that will take place across multiple days.
Supercars committed to the test as part of its parity reviews that occured between Ipswich and The Bend.
Speedcafe understands both the Chevrolet (Team 18) and Toyota (Walkinshaw TWG Racing) homologation teams requested the CoG topic be revisited.
Supercars tested just three cars when assessing CoG in February, utilising the Triple Eight Mustang, Walkinshaw TWG Supra and Team 18 Camaro that were run at the Bathurst 12 Hour.
That testing resulted in Chevrolet teams having to relocate 4.4kg of ballast to the top of their roll-cage, much to their chagrin.
Team 18 immediately began campaigning for re-testing, claiming its car had been prepared for the earlier wind tunnel testing and the other two were “real race cars”.
Walkinshaw TWG also had CoG on a list of items for review submitted to Supercars after Ipswich.
Supercars today confirmed the latest tests involve three Fords, three Toyotas and four Chevrolets.
The Fords are from Triple Eight (#888), Grove Racing (#26) and Tickford Racing (#6), with Walkinshaw TWG Racing (#2) and Brad Jones Racing (#8 and #14) both supplying Toyotas.
Erebus Motorsport (#9), Team 18 (#20 and #15 wildcard) and PremiAir Racing (#31) were all required to send Camaros.
Those cars were sealed by Supercars officials following Sunday’s action to ensure they can be tested as raced, pending supervised repairs.
The testing takes place by physically tipping each car on its side to find its tipping point and then using a formula to derive the centre of gravity position.
Supercars instigated CoG testing as part of its technical parity mandate following the introduction of the Gen2 Ford Mustang in 2019.
The weekend’s AirTouch 500 event was dominated by parity discussions following the granting of revised aerodynamics that put the Camaro outside the agreed ‘parity box’.
Supercars on Saturday morning made a secondary change to reduce the Camaro’s downforce, having been hit with an orchestrated flurry of legal letters from each Ford teams.
The Ford teams were adamant the earlier change had taken place in breach of the Teams Racing Charter, which is a contract that each team holds with the series.
Parity reviews can only be instigated after the first endurance event if a specific issue is identified beforehand, as has been the case with CoG.
Learn more about CoG testing with Brad Jones Racing’s 2024 video below