Supercars tightens tyre rules for second parc ferme trial
Supercars drivers will be forced to start races on the same tyres they qualified with at Queensland Raceway next month, as part of an ongoing parc ferme trial.
A toe-in-the-water parc ferme system was trialed in Tasmania earlier this season, with crews prevented from making set-up changes in between qualifying and the race.
Those rules have now been tightened for the upcoming second trial of the rules, with tyres now set to fall under the parc ferme restrictions.
The rule reads “all four wheels must remain on the car at the completion of the car’s last qualifying run", providing a potential banana skin for drivers trying to sneak through one of the qualifying segments without using too many green tyres.
The rules will also apply to the second-tier Super2 series.
“The feedback after Tasmania was very positive,” Supercars' Head of Motorsport Adrian Burgess told the category's official website.
“At the start of the year we agreed to do Tasmania and QR for the main series and after debriefing Tassie, we’ve elected to trial it in Super2 for one event as well.
“Adding tyres to the mix is not a big deal, but it’s an extension of the ‘what you’ve got is what you’ll race with’ formula.
“At the Commission we discussed doing the same thing with fuel as well, but we weren’t comfortable that we could do that without impacting some more than others.”
Burgess added that he was impressed by the first phase of the two-event trial back in April.
“Some teams are changing their cars drastically from qualifying to race, in terms of springs, cambers, things like that,” he said.
“In Tassie we saw people with tyre life issues in the races because they were too aggressive in qualifying.
“They didn’t want to back their set-ups off in qualifying and were carrying those camber levels in the race.
“It was a challenge for teams to manage and forced them to make compromises, which is what we wanted.”
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| Series | Supercars |
| Author | Andrew van Leeuwen |
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