There’s no such thing as a sure bet in one of the tightest fields in Supercars history.
What started as looking like a Triple Eight whitewash has quickly unravelled into a multi-driver, multi-team battle round by round.
Chaz Mostert has established himself as a title challenger with Walkinshaw Andretti United, but Tickford’s improved consistency has put it second in the teams standings.
More recently Matt Payne is leading an unlikely Grove charge towards the top.
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This isn’t the Will Brown vs. Broc Feeney season we thought we’d be getting in the second Gen3 campaign.
But for all the unpredictability, Dick Johnson Racing’s struggles for competitiveness under these new rules has been the most difficult to grasp.
The Ford homologation team ought to be a standard bearer. Before Erebus’s fairytale 2023 efforts, DJR was the only squad to really rival Triple Eight, finishing either first or second in the five seasons before the regulation changes.
It dropped precipitously to fifth in last year’s standings. This year it’s holding the same position more than 1000 points off the title lead.
But finally some delicate green shoots have emerged from this barren run.
The Sydney SuperNight was the first round of the year in which DJR had no car finish lower than sixth in every race of the weekend, returning a pair of fifths, a fourth and a sixth.
It was the team’s most productive round since New Zealand, where it capitalised on difficult weather conditions and a new circuit to collect three podiums. Anton de Pasquale won the round, though Will Davison’s Sunday ended with a baffling 19th place, indicative of the Stapylton’s struggle for consistency.
Performances have been erratic in the eight rounds since then, but the improvements have been clear, with the team failing to get both cars to the finish inside the top 10 only three times.
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But it was Sydney where things really started to click.
Both cars cracked the shootout, with Davison taking pole on Sunday. Though the veteran couldn’t hold top spot in the race, both drivers held their ground comfortably inside the top six, at last looking like genuine frontrunners.
Finally DJR was getting to grips with the Gen3 Mustang it was central in developing.
“We’ve shown glimpses of really good speed and we’ve shown good race pace,” De Pasquale said. “Getting both together is quite difficult, but we’re not far away.
“Obviously when you see people nail it, there’s a spark there somewhere. When everything lines up, it’s crazy fast. We just need to work out where that is for us.
“We have a pretty good base understanding of, ‘We’re going to roll out and this is what we’ve got or where we’re going to be roughly’. A little bit of experimenting is going to get you that next step. Then you understand what that does and learn and progress.”
Despite long stretches of dour form, De Pasquale said the team was constantly testing new configurations in pursuit of the sweet spot.
“It’s difficult,” he explained. “Obviously that’s a group exercise. We’ve been working on it this whole year.
“In Sydney we were trying things. We’re not standing still and just rolling out what we think is safe; we’re trying things and trying to get faster every time we hit the track.
“The season started down and has been on an upwards trajectory, which is really cool.
“I think we’ve got more consistency further up the grid in races and in quali, which is good, so that’s on the right path.”
But progress has been hard when the bar is constantly moving.
The Supercars form guide is barely decipherable. After a rocky start marred by parity concerns in its first year, the second season of the Gen3 rules has succeeded in drawing the field closer together, creating less predictable racing and results.
With no meaningful car development allowed, only set-up differentiates each team on any given weekend. It puts a massive premium on understanding how to find the car’s operating window. Inversely it means one bad decision can cascade into a weekend of catastrophic results.
“It takes nothing to be hero or zero,” Davison said. “It’s fascinating.
“I’ve been in the sport for a long time, but in the space of a 15-minute session you can be quickest and you can be 15th just like that.
“It takes nothing to get the car in and out of the sweet spot. We’re still all learning, finicking, getting frustrated by this car, learning what makes it tick, and that’s why we’re all on our toes going into every single weekend, because you just don’t know what’s going to unfold.
“There’s no magic bullet. We’ve seen Triple Eight have dominate some races and we’ve seen them 15th, 17th on the grid. We’ve seen Walkinshaw dominate races and we’ve seen them on the back of the grid and in the 20s in Darwin.
“That’s not because a component didn’t work, it’s just purely set-up and getting this car working on this tyre at any given circuit.”
Perhaps it’s Davison’s experience that’s allowed the 562-race veteran to come to the fore in this second season of the rules.
He’s hustled the car to its best qualifying results this season, proving what it’s capable of when the stars align, with his pole in Sydney the team’s best result on pure pace this year.
“It’s just a nice feeling to remind ourselves what we’re capable of,” he said. “That’s just what we’ve got to have our eyes fixed on, those kinds of a result, as a reminder that that’s what we can all do, and we know that.
“The windows are small. Being as consistent as we are is something that not many can do. Across all the shootouts as of late both our cars are there.
“We were on pole in Sydney, provisional pole in Townsville, we were right there in Perth topping Q2. I think that’s one big tick that we’re doing.
“Now we’ve just got to analyse bit by bit what we need to just be that little bit sharper in race trim. It doesn’t take much. We’re not far away. Both cars in the top five the last event and in Townsville. We’re proud of that. We’re proud of the steps we’re taking.
“It’s just little bit by bit, incremental gains. That’s what we’ll continue to do, and I’m sure we’ll get the rewards for it soon.”
This weekend’s Tasmania SuperSprint will be a tough test of the team’s ability to home in on the car’s sweet spot.
The shortest track on the calendar brings with it unique challenges.
Traffic and strategy play a larger role in Symmons Plains than anywhere else. Battling in the slipstream also ends up being key in race conditions.
It’s a world away from sweltering Darwin and Townsville and the aero-sensitive Sydney.
“Tasmania’s going to probably throw a spanner in the works,” De Pasquale said. “I don’t really know what to expect.
“It’s very different to where we’ve come from over the last couple of months from the track, from the weather, from the tyre — all these things.
“We have an idea of where we want to be, but once we roll out of the truck, we’ll know how we’re going to go and we’ll go from there.”
With so little room for the field to manoeuvre, just getting to the flag in one piece is the first challenge.
“It’s a crazy first lap because you come from fifth or sixth gear into first gear, which is always a recipe from disaster,” he said.
“It always shapes up at the hairpin, which is really cool, and that corner itself just promotes racing and shoulder-to-shoulder racing, which is exciting, but even the first sector just by yourself is hard work. Your heart rate is up the whole time.
“There are only a few corners, but they all mean something. Any time you have got a really short track, every little bit counts.
“We’ve seen at long tracks if you’re 0.1 or 0.2 seconds off, you’re a long way off the pace; it’s only hundredths here, so it’s all going to matter. That then promotes good racing.”
This year the weather will have everyone talking.
Whereas the sport’s trip to Launceston usually comes in autumn, this year Supercars is heading south in the middle of winter.
The mercury isn’t tipped to exceed 14 degrees on Saturday or Sunday, with overnight lows approaching freezing.
“It’s going to create lots of challenges for the teams, for the drivers and how we strategise our preparation into qualifying,” Davison said. “I’m excited about it. I love the track. I love the challenges it presents.
“With how close the cars are at the moment, qualifying is going to be absolutely insanely tight, really critical, and it’s going to really set up the weekend.
“We’re looking forward to it. We’ve come off a pole position in Sydney, a provisional pole position in Townsville, so obviously our qualifying speed’s been good, and that’s really going to set us up for a big weekend in Tasmania.
“We’re certainly keen to try and capitalise on that qualifying speed and nail some big race results.
“It’s time for us to certainly try and step up and get some trophies.”
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