Ford feel need to lose kilos
LIGHTER and faster Falcons could hit the track at Albert Park this week to slim down to the race weight of the pacesetting ZB Commodores.
The blue oval battlers are only waiting for an official goahead from Supercars HQ before sending their cars to Jenny Craig for a collection of lightweight composite body panels for use at the Australian Grand Prix meeting.
Holden dominated the opening weekend of the Supercars championship in Adelaide, with Shane van Gisbergen sweeping to a pair of pole positions and twin wins in a new red lion racer that significantly undercuts the 1410kg minimum racing weight.
The advantage of the underweight Commodore, which hits the mark with a big contribution from composite body panels, is that race teams can apply up to 40kg of ballast in the optimum spots for quick laps and race- long tyre life.
The rival Falcons are only 10kg below the minimum, a similar weight to the Nissan Altimas run by Kelly Racing.
The man leading the Falcon fightback, Tim Edwards from Tickford Racing, admits the Fords are ready to race with updated panels but cannot front that way at the AGP meeting without full approval from Supercars.
“I can’t say we’re running anything until we have approval. We’ve got to step through it,” Edwards says.
“At the moment we don’t have approval so we won’t be running the parts.”
The technical chief at Supercars Dave Stewart confirmed there had been an application for a Falcon update but would not go into detail.