The Gen3 Toyota Supra. Image: Supplied
Melbourne-based Walkinshaw TWG Racing will tonight dispatch the #1 Supra to Queensland ahead of a Supercars engine parity testing program that will double as its shakedown.
Ford and GM are using locally-based cars from Triple Eight and Matt Stone Racing for the Queensland effort, where all eyes will be on the performance of the Toyota.
Testing is scheduled to begin as early as Sunday with running on MSR’s chassis dyno, ahead of up to two days at Queensland Raceway.
The Walkinshaw Toyota and Triple Eight Mustang will then head to Bathurst, where they’ll be matched against a Team 18 Camaro in a series of sessions at the 12 Hour event.
Next stop is Sydney Motorsport Park, where five Toyotas are to hit the track in Sydney alongside the full field for the pre-season test on Wednesday February 18 and then the Friday-Sunday race meeting.
Tight timelines are making it a gruelling start to life as a Toyota team for the rebranded Walkinshaw TWG, which will also send up to five staff on the pre-Sydney mission.
The team has been flatout in Melbourne assembling engines that are then being taken to Brisbane for tuning and sign-off by Craig Hasted on Supercars’ category dyno.
Walkinshaw has undertaken the Toyota engine project in conjunction with UK firm Swindon, which spruiked its involvement this week amid a last-minute rush to get cars on track.
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Its UK-built test mule engine has completed over 5000km of running since the Gen3 Supra first hit the track last September – a dropped valve during a November outing its only known issue.
A ‘race spec’ variant of the 5.2-litre Toyota engine, however, was only ready to run on Supercars’ dyno for the first time in mid-January, while Monday at Queensland Raceway will mark its first track laps.
Walkinshaw needs five engines signed off by Supercars to get itself and customer team Brad Jones Racing up and running. Spares are only likely to be ready by race week in Sydney.
BJR is understood to this week have received its first ‘race spec’ engine, the second to pass through Supercars, having previously only had a dummy available during its car builds.
The Albury-based team, which has been charting the build progress of its cars via YouTube, is yet to confirm when it will be able to complete and shake down its trio of new Supras.
Mostert’s new machine, meanwhile, is already no stranger to long sojourns, having been the Supra chassis shipped to the United States by Supercars last September for wind tunnel testing.
Walkinshaw elected to airfreight its car back over New Year so it could be prepared for the season.
It’s now wearing its full race livery – presented to partners at Toyota’s Melbourne design studio on Wednesday night ahead of an online public reveal of both Walkinshaw cars this Sunday.
