Holden VE racer ‘officially' debuted

Holden has published photos of its new V8 Supercar racer. The photos were taken at the car company’s Lang Lang Proving Ground before the car headed off  for more aerodynamic testing at Woomera.

CarPoint’s motorsport magazine affiliate Auto Action broke the news of the car when it caught the car in full livery at the South Australian test site last month.

The Commodore racecar shares little with the production car – not even dimensions. Under the two-make category’s rules, the cars must comply to strict dimensional ‘footprints’. The XXL VE has had to be shrunk to come within the so-called ‘Project Blueprint’ dimensions.

Not surprisingly, Holden Racing Team’s Mark Skaife was one of the first to test the prototype.

“If there’s a better looking race car around, I haven’t seen it!” commented Skaife. “The flared guards of the VE road car suit the race variant perfectly and give the car a real hard nosed Euro stance.”

“Under our category rules, the performance of the VE will need to be pretty much line ball with our current VZ Commodores to protect the existing parity system,” he said.

The car is currently undergoing homologation. Further testing must take place alongside its Ford Falcon opposition before the car is approved for its 2007 debut.

Once the prototype specifications are approved by the category administrator, the race will be on among the Holden teams to produce VEs for next season’s series opener in Adelaide in March.

Simon McNamara, GM Holden Ltd Manager - Motorsport, said the company had been working with its teams on development of the VE racing variant for over a year.

“All of our teams have had a significant input into the design process and they will soon begin building their own VE race cars. It is Holden’s ambition for them to start next year [season] with new cars,” McNamara said.