Supercars claims parity despite "engine anomaly"

Parity continues to be a talking point in the Supercars paddock three rounds into the Gen3 era.

Camaro-shod drivers have won every race so far as the Ford teams grapple with an alleged engine drivability issue.

A new engine map for the Ford V8s debuted in Perth over the weekend while Supercars also experimented with different shift cut lengths on the Mustangs in the field.

However the changes yielded a tepid response from drivers and more software tweaking is expected.

The view that there is a technical inequality between the two brands isn't shared by Supercars, though, with technical boss Burgess adamant there is already parity.

He did, however, acknowledge an "anomaly" between the quadcam 5.4-litre Ford motor and its pushrod, 5.7-litre GM counterpart.

"I think so, yes," Burgess told the Parked Up Plus podcast when asked if there was parity.

"There is still an engine anomaly. Is it affecting the show? You can argue one way or another. It depends who you ask. I don't think it is. Do we want to remove that anomaly? Of course we do.

"That's what we're working towards doing. But at the moment for me the racing has been fantastic. [The cars] are extremely, extremely close. But unless you're the bloke stood on the top step every week, you're going to say, 'no, we need to fix something'."

Burgess pointed to the tight margins on the short, sharp Wanneroo layout, where the top 20 were separated by 0.304s in the first segment of knockout qualifying on Saturday.

"We're all too critical," he said. "We're all very close to it. We all want perfection. Getting perfection is sometimes a long process.

"But when you sit back and see what we've got, what we've achieved, what we've put on the track, for me, I think it is testament to the work of both homologation teams, Supercars Technical, the manufacturers, the teams...

"I personally think the cars are great. I think the racing so far has been good. Can you make it better? You can always make things better. But when you get 20 cars in qualifying 1 there covered by three-tenths, what do we want more from that?

"I think we've got a great product, a great product for the future."

Another pre-Perth parity tweak was a slight shift in Centre of Gravity for the Camaros based on recent testing.

According to Burgess, the change – which equated to 2.3 millimetres – was about ticking boxes more than it was hobbling the Camaros.

"We're trying to make sure we've got parity, and we want to tick every single box we can so people don't come and ask us questions," he said.

"We want [the cars] paritised, so that then those guys can go and race hard and fair knowing they've got the same ability and the same technical package as the other side.

"We could have got away with not doing it. I don't believe for a second you see any difference on the track that comes from the CoG adjustment. But we know we've ticked the box and done the job."