Brutal road test looms
Drivers fear Newcastle street circuit opener
FORGET the Netflix Formula 1 special.
Supercars’ season debut on the streets of Newcastle looms as the real ‘Drive to Survive’.
Let’s call it for what it really is – a Novocastrian nightmare.
In an exclusive News Corp Australia poll ahead of the 2023 Supercars season, the grid was split on just about every topic – except for which track would pose the most brutal test. “Newcastle.”
The concrete canyon will call on every weapon in a driver’s arsenal if he dares test its hellish twists and turns, kerbs and chicanes.
Man and machine, mapping a course through a maze of madness – only it’s man versus his machine at the same time.
They say it takes 10,000 hours to master something. But these Gen3 cars are so new, so different, so completely removed from everything that came before, that the sub 30-odd hours these drivers have had to master their machines will feel like minutes.
The 25 daredevils who take to the streets this weekend are the cream of the driving crop but even they are nervous for what is about to come.
A decade of finetuning the Car of the Future-era did little to spare drivers from the snap and bite of a street circuit as deadly as Newcastle. So how will they handle the same test in a machine designed to make you falter? As one driver put it: “It’s hard in the old cars … but this?”
“At this point the cars aren’t very proven and so when we take the car to Newcastle, yes the prototype has done laps, but it hasn’t jumped kerbs at Newcastle for 500km,” another said. “These cars will promote a lot more mistakes and at a street circuit, that’s going to bite the most.”
Shell V-Power ace Will Davison deemed the Gen3 debut a “baptism of fire” and his words ring true up and down pit lane.
“It’s bumpy, it’s narrow; it’s fast in spots with some kerbs thrown in and we have a big unknown with the car setup,” a veteran driver revealed.
“It’s hard to look after the tyres in these new cars and there’s a lot of corners there where you’re trying to get the power down and (you are) up and down hills, (so) it’s going to create a big challenge.”
Ninety-five nightmarish laps. It’s survival of the fittest and most fearless, 2.6km at a time. Then back it up and go again tomorrow. We’ve seen some brilliant battles in the past. McLaughlin versus Lowndes in 2017; Waters and van Gisbergen circa 2019. What will this latest – and possibly greatest – iteration serve up?
For more than 1200 days we have waited for the next Newcastle instalment and this one looms as the most exciting yet. Supercars promised a Gen3 shake-up and by every measure, the season opener is set to deliver. Gentlemen, start your engines.