{"id":492701,"date":"2026-02-20T15:54:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/492701\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T15:54:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T15:54:14","slug":"supercars-news-triple-eight-undertaking-deep-dive-into-ford-engine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/492701\/","title":{"rendered":"Supercars news: Triple Eight undertaking deep-dive into Ford engine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/MH6_4923.jpg\" alt=\"Triple Eight undertaking deep-dive into Ford engine\"\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWill Brown&#8217;s Mustang in Sydney. Image: Supplied <\/p>\n<p>Triple Eight has replaced the Dick Johnson Racing-owned Motorsport Powertrains as the marque\u2019s engine supplier as part of the Red Bull-backed team\u2019s switch from General Motors.<\/p>\n<p>Minor changes to the 5.4-litre Coyote V8 have been implemented ahead of this weekend\u2019s season-opener in Sydney, but it\u2019s only the beginning as the Brisbane squad applies its trademark attention to detail.<\/p>\n<p>Team manager Mark Dutton told Speedcafe it\u2019s reliability and not the tightly-controlled performance aspects of the engine that are the main focus after various failures last year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe drivers thought the base package was pretty good from the first time the drove it, so it\u2019s not miles away, but the reliability is a big focus for us,\u201d Dutton told Speedcafe.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re in the understanding phase, really, and the testing phase, because everything\u2019s quite a long lead time to actually invoke change and know that you can prove something specifically cracks and things like that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a few little tidy ups we\u2019ve done. They\u2019re not power gains, because you can\u2019t, there\u2019s the cap to control power, so you\u2019re not trying to change the power at all.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut there\u2019s just some tidy ups that you can do when you come in with fresh eyes, as we have.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/speedcafe.com\/supercars-news-2026-sydney-motorsport-park-test-results-wednesday-will-brown-fastest\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Will Brown fastest, slow start for Toyotas at Sydney test<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Triple Eight\u2019s new engine shop built within its existing Banyo headquarters has so far churned out eight new engines and undertaken half-life rebuilds on five more.<\/p>\n<p>Minor upgrades such as shifting the orientation of the throttle body have been applied to existing engines at Sydney Motorsport Park by Triple Eight engine shop staff.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cLittle things like that don\u2019t give you any more power, but it should give you a bit more balanced airflow through the manifold and things like that,\u201d said Dutton. \u201cThey\u2019re tidy ups.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dutton is unsure when further upgrades will be ready to roll out, noting the lengthy process of analysis, testing and homologation that must take place.<\/p>\n<p>A particular focus is understood to be on the crankshaft, on which cracking has been reported despite a last-minute emergency supplier change ahead of the 2024 Bathurst 1000.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re just starting the process of measuring, trying to understand, trying to put numbers to things so that you can make decisions based on those numbers,\u201d Dutton said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou can have all logic in the world and apply really good science and engineering, but if it\u2019s a factor that is unrelated to that, a chassis side factor, for example, you can tune up the engine side of things and still have the issue because it\u2019s coming from the chassis.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo it\u2019s quite different to know for sure what the problem is, but we\u2019re going to give it a red hot crack.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1020768\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Bathurst12Hour-Supercars-027-copy.jpg\" alt=\"Broc Feeney's #88 Red Bull Ampol Racing Ford Mustang.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>Broc Feeney\u2019s #88 Red Bull Ampol Racing Ford Mustang at Bathurst..<\/p>\n<p>Triple Eight\u2019s engine efforts appeared to suffer a blow in January when <a href=\"https:\/\/speedcafe.com\/supercars-news-2026-triple-eight-ford-engine-shop-jamie-whincup-manager-quits\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the man recruited to head up the new department, Cam Clancy, departed the team.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The engine shop currently has just two full-time staff, former MPT employees Kaz Penwarden\u00a0and Brent Blakey, with a third to join shortly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe haven\u2019t tried to replace Cam like-for-like and we think we\u2019re in a good place,\u201d said Dutton.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe think we could share the workload and we can treat it a bit like another T8 department, rather than a standalone thing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKaz and Brent really stepped up and we\u2019ve another young fellow starting soon, so we feel we are we have the right people in the building.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Triple Eight driver Will Brown topped the opening leg of pre-season testing at Sydney Motorsport Park on Wednesday, leading Grove Racing\u2019s Matt Payne in a Ford one-two.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/t.cfjump.com\/92797\/b\/285241\" rel=\"nofollow sponsored noopener\" data-bid=\"1\" data-no-instant=\"1\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: none; vertical-align: middle;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/285241.gif\" alt=\"\"\/><br \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Will Brown&#8217;s Mustang in Sydney. Image: Supplied Triple Eight has replaced the Dick Johnson Racing-owned Motorsport Powertrains as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85,102904],"class_list":{"0":"post-492701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-motor","11":"tag-motor-sports","12":"tag-motosport","13":"tag-motosports","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-triple-eight-race-engineering"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}