Whincup braced for V6 engine challenge

Having spent last season splitting its focus between winning Whincup a seventh Supercars title and developing the aero package for the new ZB Commodore, the factory Holden squad now faces the task of fine-tuning the new turbo power plant.

Developed between Triple Eight and KRE Race Engines in Australia and GM Racing in the United States, the twin-turbo V6 is set to be used in Wildcard entries this season before replacing the V8 for 2019.

With Whincup admitting 'there's still work to do' on the V6 engine, he says both he and the team are braced for a second year of heavy development lifting.

And he's planning on being at the forefront of that development work himself.

"We'd love to just focus on one thing, which is this year's championship, but we've always got one eye on what's coming up in the future," Whincup told Motorsport.com.

"No doubt we'll be doing a heap of miles, a heap of testing, in the new V6 so we can get it up to speed and ready to go for 2019.

"We love development, we love change. But there's still quite a bit of work to be done on the V6 to get it up to speed.

"Actually it's not so much up to speed, but we need to get it where we want it to be. We can always just wind the boost up and do the lap time no problem, but that's not entirely what it's all about. It's about having a nice engine that has good drivability.

"We've still got work to do there. I love development, I love working with the engineers to see what we can come up with.

"It's going to be a good challenge this year.

"It's an unbelievably good sport, and we've got good lives being able to race cars around the country... but if you do the same thing year in, year out, it would get stale for anyone.

"To have a new challenge with the new car is great, and then once we get on top of that we have the new engine coming on as well.

"It's a good place to be."

Mechanical improvements key to ZB success

Looking ahead to this season, Whincup says its mechanical improvements, not the new aero package, that the team is pinning its hopes on with the ZB Commodore.

Having lacked single-lap pace compared to the Penske Fords last year, Triple Eight has made no secret that the off-season has been spent looking for gains.

However Whincup has played down the idea that the switch in bodywork will make any difference, pointing to the rigorous aero parity testing that was completed before the bodywork was homologated.

"The aero won't make any difference because we've done all the parity testing," he said.

"It will be the same as last year, all the cars are completely equal.

"So it just comes down to the mechanical side of things. We're building two new cars around a set of new aero regs, and then being able to develop and make our car mechanically better than last year – it's been a crazy off-season.

"We're just looking forward to getting to the track and seeing if all that work turns into results or not."