SUPERCARS chief motorsport officer Tim Edwards admits “time is the enemy” in the mission to get the Toyota V8 engine fully on par with its rivals.

Having elected to skip the post-Sydney ride day, homologation team Walkinshaw TWG Racing worked tirelessly to build up its spares stockpile in the short period prior to Albert Park, given André Heimgartner suffered a Round 1 engine failure and another motor was changed on Ryan Wood’s Supra.

On the performance side, the Supras did seem slightly down in the speed trap relative to the Mustangs and Camaros at Sydney Motorsport Park.

Ryan Walkinshaw calmly had acknowledged: “It’s not exactly where we want it to be yet but we have got the best guys in the business working on it and we’re not a million miles away.”

Speaking with V8 Sleuth yesterday in Melbourne, Edwards expanded on that: “Walkinshaw and ourselves know why and it’s just a work in progress.

Tim Edwards. Pic: Mark Walker

“Growing pains, teething issues, that’s what you expect with a program like this.

“They’ve had to develop an engine to a far greater degree than the two incumbents because there was no sort of motorsport derivative of that engine around, and they had less time than the others. They had a shorter timeframe and a bigger task.

“So it was no surprise to Walkinshaw or ourselves that there were some teething issues but they’re working hard to get on top of them.

“I’m fully aware of what they’ve had to do since Sydney. They’re working around the clock but they know what they have got to do.”

Asked how soon any such gap might be fully closed, Edwards replied: “Everybody wants everything yesterday. There’s no magic bullet with anything in life.

“Both parties know what needs to be done; it just takes time to do that.”

Parity ended up looking pretty in Sydney, with Chevrolet defying the doubters to win a race via Anton De Pasquale and Toyota managing to get five cars in the top 10 on the Sunday.

Devising a revised parity monitoring framework had been high on the championship’s agenda in any case.

“We’ve made a lot of gains in terms of we’ve got an OEM council, we’re working with each of the manufacturers at both a global and local level and the homologation teams,” Supercars CEO James Warburton told V8 Sleuth last month.

“There’s a lot more data sharing and I think we’re very comfortable with where we sit.

“We’ve done everything we possibly can to address it and to allow Supercars to have the power based on data to make changes that are required.”