Everything you need to know about the 2023 Supercars season

Wednesday, 8 March 2023

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Motorsport fanatics around the country got a big dose of ‘the new’ last weekend, with Formula 1 and the IndyCar Series both kicking off their respective 2023 seasons. This weekend, it’s the turn of a category that’s much closer to home – Supercars.

Round one of the Supercars season starts this coming Friday in Newcastle with a pair of practice sessions, with qualifying and two huge 250km races set to follow on the weekend. A handful of new faces and an all-new pair of cars mean it’s going to be a fascinating event.

Fascinating? You mean Shane van Gisbergen isn’t going to win both races by 10 seconds…

Heimgartner was quickest in the recent official Supercars test at Sydney Motorsport Park.

Easy tiger, steady on. Van Gisbergen’s incredible success in last year’s series, where he won a record 21 races including the Bathurst 1000, was as much a joy for Kiwi supporters as it was a point of contention for keyboard warriors and armchair critics. But, it’s unlikely to happen again this year.

Each time Supercars rolls out a new form of car like this year’s new Gen 3 Chevrolet Camaro and Ford Mustang, there tends to be a big reset in the pit-lane pecking order. Triple Eight had the quickest cars over a longer run last season, but that isn’t necessarily going to be the case this year.

Shane van Gisbergen and Broc Feeney, pictured with Red Bull Ampol Racing’s new Gen 3 Camaro.

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Payne [right], pictured with experienced teammate David Reynolds.

The last time Supercars had a big platform shift like this was ten years ago in 2013 with the launch of Car of the Future. The series went from having just two different teams and four different drivers winning races in 2012 to a staggering eight teams and 13 drivers claiming victories.

Are these new cars really all that different? They still have four tyres and a steering wheel, don't they?

The changes aren’t what I’d call radical, but they’re vast and varied enough to make this arguably the biggest switch-up in Supercars hardware since the series introduced ‘Project Blueprint’ in the early noughts.

BRT’s Todd Hazelwood was the quickest Mustang driver at the Sydney test.

The fundamental recipe is more or less unchanged compared to 2022. The Camaro and Mustang are both based on a shared chromoly space frame platform. The Camaro is powered by a GM 5.7-litre V8, and the Mustang a Ford 5.4-litre V8. No forced induction or hybrid tech in sight.

Where the bulk of the change sits is in aero. The outgoing cars had hideous ‘aero wash’ issues, where the amount of downforce being generated by a car was large enough that any car following closely behind it would struggle for turn or control. Ipso facto, that’s why a lot of last year’s races were a bit ‘follow the leader’.

These new cars have 67% less downforce than the last cars, which theoretically means passing and close racing should come more frequently.

The other big thing Supercars has done away with are a lot of the ‘hardpoints’ that both cars had to share across the board. So, the Mustang on the grid actually looks a bit like a real Mustang now – and not a bulbous blob of contorted metal like the old Mustang.

They’re also meant to be cheaper to make and rebuild, and easier for new manufacturers to hop into should they wish to join the series. The jury’s still very much out on both of those points.

Are there many new rookies to follow this year?

The matter of parity is already a hot topic for this season, before racing has even started.

There is, actually. Three drivers start their full-time Supercars careers this weekend; Matthew Payne, Cameron Hill, and Declan Fraser.

Payne is a New Zealander who’s been heavily pushed by Grove Racing for a few years now. If it was up to them, he would’ve started in the series last year. An extra season in the Super2 feeder series (where he finished third in the points) has served him well. He was quick at Bathurst last year and was quicker than teammate David Reynolds at the official Sydney Supercars test day last month.

Hill and Fraser are also Super2 graduates, replacing Todd Hazelwood at Matt Stone Racing and Jake Kostecki at Tickford Racing, respectively.

Where did those guys go?

Well Hazelwood has popped up at Blanchard Racing as the replacement for Tim Slade, who’s switched to PremiAir Racing, and Jake Kostecki was quickly replaced after it was confirmed that he got into a scuffle with another driver at last year’s Supercars gala awards night. Ouch.

The driver line-ups at Red Bull Ampol Racing, Shell V-Power Racing, Erebus Motorsport, Team 18, Brad Jones Racing, and Walkinshaw Andretti United are all unchanged – although the latter has swapped its Holden Commodores for a pair of Ford Mustangs.

Coke’s famous colours swap teams this season, now gracing the Erebus Motorsport entries of Will Brown [pictured] and Brodie Kostecki.

That Sydney test you mentioned. Did it all go smoothly and to plan?

Yes!

Really?

No.

Oh. Why?

So, depending on who in the Supercars paddock you talk to, it appears the Mustang has quite a performance deficit to its Camaro rival. At the end of that day, Camaros locked out top eight fastest times, with the quickest Mustang more than a second off the pace.

Various Camaro-running team owners and engineers levelled accusations against Ford teams, ranging from theories that they hadn’t run new tyres on the day, to out and out accusations of ‘sandbagging’. Some of the more outspoken Ford drivers have been quick to shut down that talk, with David Reynolds even stating that the Mustang was a second behind on pace – an eternity in the racing world.

It appears Supercars sided with the Ford teams, after scheduling a subsequent private test day the following week. According to reports, the Camaro’s downforce has been increased up front. The Mustang could get a new engine ‘map’, too. Whether these changes will ensure ‘parity’ remains to be seen.

Who was quick at that Sydney test? Apart from none of the Fords, anyway.

A Kiwi led the bulk of the running, but it wasn’t van Gisbergen. Instead it was Andre Heimgartner from Brad Jones Racing. He led the session at halfway and then further improved to top the whole thing.

Coke Erebus drivers Will Brown and Brodie Kostecki were super quick, too, ending the day second and third. The three other BJR entries were fourth to sixth, with van Gisbergen and Mark Winterbottom completing the Camarothon up front.

These times are unlikely to be all that relevant. The cars are likely to have all changed between then and now, we don’t know which teams were pushing on the day and which weren’t, and there’s not a lot of similarities between Sydney Motorsport Park and Newcastle.

Ah Newcastle, so it’s going to be a crashfest?

That’s quite possible, absolutely. Supercars have always loved starting championships at tough, uncompromising circuits. The Adelaide 500 has historically been the curtain raiser, with Mount Panorama having a go last year. And Newcastle will be no different.

Introduced in 2017, Newcastle has always produced dramatic racing. The unique turn one funnels drivers onto a bumpy, uphill straight before the most obvious passing opportunity on the 2.6km circuit; turn two. The rest of the track is a quick staircase of lefts and rights, building towards an on-edge final sequence of corners.

What’s going to make things even more tricky for the drivers is that the series hasn’t visited Newcastle since pre-pandemic times, meaning most drivers are likely to be pretty rusty when it comes to getting back into a rhythm.

This all sounds really exciting, I can’t wait to see the Supercars when they come to New Zealand!

Yeah, about that. Supercars has left New Zealand off the calendar this year (boo). Barring when Covid-19 travel restrictions prevented the series from coming here, it’ll be the first time since 2001 that the championship won’t have raced on our side of the ditch.

Supercars didn’t necessarily explain why New Zealand was off the table for this year, but it’s understood that Hampton Downs Motorsport Park (the track that led talks as a replacement for Pukekohe) was hobbled by resource consent constraints.

Oh bummer.

Yeah, big bummer.

So, when’s it on?

First practice kicks off at 1.00pm NZDT on Friday, with second practice following at 3.30pm. Qualifying starts on Saturday at 12.55pm, with the first race of the year scheduled for 4.30pm. The final race of the weekend commences at 4.25pm on Sunday afternoon.