After taking part in the non-championship round at the Albert Park Circuit ten days ago, Supercar teams are off to Tasmania for the next official round of the series to be held at the Symmons Plains Raceway this coming weekend.
Although we won’t see the fantastic roiling starts we saw in Melbourne, the Tasmanian circuit has its own highlights and challenges that drivers both love and admire.
Firstly, it is the shortest track on the calendar at just 2.4 kilometres in length and as such it requires drivers to have a fast car with good brakes underneath them.
It also has the tightest corner of any on the Supercars calendar which often produces some very exciting overtaking manoeuvres as well as carnage as drivers are jostling for position at the start.
For Erebus driver David Reynolds, the hairpin presents the biggest challenge and he will need to make sure his car is handling just right to get the job done successfully.
“It’s very a tricky track, there’s only three corners so your car and your tyre phasing needs to be perfect to be on the front row,” he explained. ““Each corner is fundamentally very different so it’s an engineering nightmare because you can be good at one part and terrible at another. There’s different ways to think about set up but ideally, you’ve got to have a good balanced car for each corner and also straight line speed.”
“I think our engines are quite strong, and our braking is good. If we have enough lock to get around the hairpin I think we’ve got a very good slow speed turn car; we’ve got to work on getting off the corner and we’ll have the perfect car.”
