Leading drivers claim no difference in performance over Gold Coast kerbs

Two of Friday’s fastest drivers in the Supercars Championship practice sessions around the streets of Surfers Paradise have dismissed worries that their cars felt dramatically different from last season to now, after off-season suspension package tweaks.

Both Triple Eight Race Engineering’s Jamie Whincup and Cam Waters from Tickford Racing, who was the fastest driver on Friday, said they hadn’t noticed a difference in the ride of their cars at the most demanding circuit for suspension on the calendar despite an overhaul of the suspension regulations at the end of 2018.

At the end of last season, Supercars banned the usage of twin or multiple spring setups in the cars which were aimed at fine tuning the suspension, also increasing the costs as teams were spending more than some could afford to extract performance out of the setup.

The Whincup was asked by TouringCarTimes in the post-practice press conference as to whether he noticed a difference year on year after Triple Eight’s intricate twin-spring and damper setup was made redundant at the start of this year.

“The car is so different to last year, especially with the aero, you’d have to come here and put twins in and go again to get a full comparison,” said Whincup to TouringCarTimes.

“It’s very difficult to do it back to back with all the changes which have been made over the past 12 months.”

Speaking after the day’s final practice session in which he came third, Whincup was asked about watching the co-driver only session at the chicane and gave his assessment on the proposed implementation of control dampers in 2020.

“Yeah I did, I had a look and the summary was I’m going to look forward to running a control damper next year,” Whincup said.

Waters said that he had felt an improvement in this year’s Ford Mustang compared to last year’s Ford Falcon despite the changes, giving him more confidence around the most kerb-heavy circuit on the calendar.

“My car probably feels the best it’s been at this place, even if you take the aero and everything out of it,” Waters said.

“The car is probably the best it’s been over the kerbs and it’s probably the first time that it actually rewards you putting the faith in the car that it’s actually going to do its job.

“If that’s the linear springs or double dampers or geometry, it’s probably a mixture but our car has definitely made an improvement over the bumps and kerbs.”