Lighter Ford is quick fix
LIGHTER and faster Falcons could hit the track at Albert Park this week in a bid to match 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 lightweight composite body panels to 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 is that up to 40kg of ballast can be placed in optimum spots for quick laps and tyre life.
The Falcons are only 10kg below the minimum, a similar weight to the Nissan Altimas run by Kelly Racing.
The crafty use of composites in the Commodore has been led by Triple Eight Race Engineering, the benchmark team for more than a decade, in a homologation program that began midway through last year.
Engineers found it impossible to obtain some production body panels from Germany and applied for permission to make them from lightweight composites, but also added a composite firewall at the back of the cabin.
The on-track result of the weight savings took Ford by surprise, even though it and Nissan had been offered the chance to re-homologate their cars towards the end of 2017.
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, confirms there has been an application for a Falcon update.
“We have an application and we’re working through it. That’s both the Ford and Nissan homologation teams,” he says. “By some point this week I’m expecting we’ll be happy to accept that.
“To put it into context, the Nissan and Commodore bon- nets are aluminium but the Ford has a steel bonnet so it is a slight disadvantage. The ZB has a composite roof.
“We’ve talked to them about presenting a composite bonnet. There may be some composite roof panels. I know they’ve made one but I don’t know how quickly it will happen.”
But Ford insiders say a composite bonnet and roof, both currently made from steel, have been produced and it’s a relatively quick fix to make the switch.