Mustang Domination

The Ford Mustang Supercar, in particular the DJR Team Penske entries of Scott McLaughlin and Fabian Coulthard, have dominated the first half of the 2019 Virgin Australia Supercars Championship. And despite technical changes to the car to bring it back to the pack, it’s still the one to beat.

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The form of the Ford Mustang Supercar has been the major talking point of the 2019 Virgin Australia Supercars Championship season.

After storming out of the gates with dominant wins, centre of gravity changes were made to the Mustangs, in addition to the Holden Commodores, in March following a test that showed a disparity with the Nissan Altima. Then the Mustang was forced to run smaller rear-wing endplates, a lower rear-wing Gurney flap and a reduced front under-tray extension from April.

The wing changes were made after an extensive analysis of track data and additional Computational Fluid Dynamic work by Supercars’ technical department and its UK-based technology partner D2H.

Supercars said the changes were made based on the ‘Racing Entitlements Contract’ (REC) and rule A1.4 of the Supercars Operation Manual, which dictates the championship’s technical parity guidelines, allowing changes if a significant disparity exists between the competing cars.

“The Supercars technical department has worked through the data available and requested these changes from homologating team DJR Team Penske and Ford Performance in a transparent manner,” said Supercars CEO Sean Seamer.

“The Mustang is a world-class race car and we respect the work that has gone into developing the package. Despite passing VCAT any incoming car needs to meet the incumbent. “DJRTP and Ford Performance understand that technical parity underpins the success of the sport and accept the changes.”

The Ford teams, in addition to Ford Australia and Ford Performance, accepted the ruling and promptly made the changes.