MOTORSPORT: Mustang Supercar to be slowed

Expect Supercars to introduce centre of gravity technical parity regulations to slow the Ford Mustang ahead of the next championship outing in Tasmania in early April.

And modifications to the Ford Mustang’s aerodynamic package are also on the cards as the category reacts to the new V8 coupe’s domination of the first two rounds 2019 Virgin Australia Supercars Championship (VASC).

Ten Supercars racers had their centres of gravity tested at Team Kelly Racing today (March 18), after the Mustang added four poles and race wins at Albert Park to the two it collected in Adelaide at the season opener.

Those 10 cars included a Mustang from Shell DJR Team Penske (the car’s official homologation team) and a Holden Commodore ZB from factory-backed Red Bull HRT.

To avoid any shenanigans, Supercars ordered both teams to take both their cars to Kelly Racing on Sunday night, directly after racing at Albert Park was completed.

Reigning champion Scott McLaughlin now leads the VASC championship by 31 points in his Shell V-Power Mustang from consistent factory Red Bull Holden driver, Jamie Whincup, with another three Mustangs in the top six.

Both DJRTP and fellow Ford team, Tickford Racing, are arguing any Mustang performance advantage is being exacerbated by the Holden and Nissan teams’ struggles to come to terms with the now-mandated linear springs.

DJRTP boss Ryan Story said the team would accept Supercars’ decision but urged caution.

“I think we need to see more data on it,” Story told carsales.

“We have had a bit of a charmed run to date. I don’t think you can discount the quality of the talent behind the wheel in some of those examples as well,” he commented.

“I don’t think we are seeing our competitors at the peak of their powers yet either, especially with some of these other regulation changes we are seeing,” Story stated referring to the spring rule change.

But the Holden and Nissan teams are scoffing at that. It’s known they have a long list of aerodynamic concerns regarding the Mustang, including those big rear-spoiler endplates, which they assert help produce extra cornering grip.

Rivals don’t understand how some of the aerodynamic features of the Mustang were approved for racing -- not that any of them are willing to go on the record and say that yet.

Red Bull boss Roland Dane, already a vocal critic of the Mustang’s looks, came the closest by voicing his support for the investigations Supercars was making.

“In all honesty, I think we are not quite at the level of the Mustang. But Supercars can decide what needs or doesn’t need to be done,” he said.

“They have been investigating it since Adelaide to make sure, to the best of their ability, it [technical parity] is there, so I am going to leave it to them for the moment,” Dane stated.

The centre of gravity (CofG) debate is running in parallel with the aerodynamic issue. Currently there is no CoG rules specified in Supercars.

The lower the centre of gravity of a racing car, the better it handles. Building a racecar underweight allows a team to place more ballast lower, where it can maximise this advantage.

The Holden and Nissan teams think the DJRTP Mustangs have been built significantly underweight and then ballasted. They are less concerned about the Tickford cars.

This suspicion has been bolstered after Supercars weighed the exhaust silencers of the DJRTP Mustangs and found them to be significantly heavier than their rivals. For the Melbourne races, however, the silencers were replaced with lighter units more in-line with the class average weights.

Clearly, a heavy exhaust is one way of running weight very low in the car without declaring it as ballast. What is called external ballast (ballast mounted outside the cockpit) is illegal in Supercars racing.

“I believe we were running those mufflers as early as Phillip Island last year,” said Story.

“There was regime change in the Supercars technical department. They didn’t like it; they asked us to change it -- and we did,” he explained.

All the Mustangs were also ordered to rectify a panel gap between the trailing edge of the rear windscreen and the bootlid that was believed to act as an aerodynamic aid. Story, however, dismissed this as an installation issue that has been rectified.

The paddock scuttlebutt about the Mustang rolls on to suggest the car has a flat floor (which can boost down-force and reduce drag) and that a Mustang prototype was wind tunnel tested in the USA. Both allegations have been rejected by DJRTP.

Wind tunnel testing is not illegal until a Supercar is homologated (the Mustang was signed off by Supercars in December 2018) but both DJRTP and development partner, the US-based Ford Performance operation, insist the Mustang was only designed using computational fluid dynamics -- essentially a digital version of wind tunnel testing.

Testing in a wind tunnel would be more expensive and slower than CFD, although it could deliver benefits.

The wind tunnel testing rumour has grown in volume since a Mustang Supercar show car appeared on display at Ford global headquarters in Dearborn recently. The show car is based on a de-registered chassis sent to Penske Racing in 2015 to use as a basis for US manufacturing, a plan subsequently vetoed by Supercars.

Story says the show car was only built-up earlier this year with significant restrictions imposed by Supercars.

“It doesn’t have a front undertray, it doesn’t have a rear gurney. It has a number of other changes including a restricted ECU that follow a precedent that’s been set in the past when other cars have gone overseas,” Story explained.