Tyres, tyres, tyres, they are the talk of the town.
Between the Clipsal 500 and the Australian Grand Prix everyone was able to get a good feel for both sets of Dunlop tyres introduced at the start of the 2017 Supercars season.
The soft tyre (marked with yellow signage) and the new supersoft compound tyre (marked with white signage) came into play at the test day last month, where both teams had a chance to try them before heading into the main game.
“We had only done one lap at the test day on the new supersoft tyre,” said SVG.
“We are just learning. We had a bad test day from a car point of view, which meant we didn’t get that much of a run on them.”
Read more about the Test Day >> HERE
Now the Clipsal 500 and the Australian Grand Prix have been run and won, it’s a great chance to reflect on how the tyres performed.
“We had a great round at Clipsal on the soft tyre, and then ran with the supersoft at the Australian Grand Prix, which was really different,” said SVG.
“I think the racing at the AGP was actually really good, it’ll be good for the future. Overall I think that Dunlop has done an awesome job and it’s creating better racing.”
To avoid any confusion (we had to get schooled on this from our tyre guys), last year’s “hard” tyres are now “softs” and last year’s soft’s are now “super soft”.
The largest difference in the new tyres is the shape. The extra 10mm in width and flatter, squarer profile mean more rubber is in contact with the track and that creates more grip. And what does more grip mean? Even faster lap times!
“It is similar to last year’s, but I think the tyres have much more grip. As a driver, you always like grip which then allows you to go faster,” said SVG.
“We could have had a better weekend at the AGP, but even though the results didn’t show it, we really did learn a lot about the tyre. I think we’ve got some solid data”
The Red Bull Holden Racing Team crew head to Symmons Plains for the Tasmania SuperSprint, April 7-9, where we’ll be battling it out for championship points on the supersoft tyres for the first time.
Check out last year’s Symmons Plains Gallery > > HERE