‘Won’t like hearing that’: Supercars giant’s dire numbers revealed ahead of Tassie parity tweak

Chevrolet teams are hoping the latest raft of parity tweaks will have them competing on an even playing field when Supercars resumes from its post-New Zealand hiatus with this weekend’s Tasmania Super 440

Parity is a constant discussion in Supercars in the Gen3 era, particularly with the advent of Toyota in the sport making it a three-way fight — and a three-way comparison under the sport’s equalisation rules.

But whereas Ford was the manufacturer feeling most aggrieved in the first three years of this regulation cycle, General Motors brand Chevrolet has found itself behind the eight ball in 2026.

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Homologation squad Team 18 is best placed on the title table, but it’s languishing in sixth. Not only is it a whopping 466 points off top spot after only four rounds, but it’s 143 points behind Dick Johnson Racing in fifth place.

There are only two Chevrolet drivers inside the top 10: Anton de Pasquale, currently seventh but 236 points off top spot, and Jack Le Brocq, who’s 10th and only 23 points clear in the last finals berth.

The dearth of big results — there’s been only once GM pole and race win and no GM round wins so far this season — led Supercars to make changes to the Camaro homologation package ahead of the previous weekend in Christchurch to move aerodynamic balance rearwards to better match the performance profiles of the Mustang and Supra.

Those changes, however, weren’t deemed powerful enough, and from this weekend further tweaks to the front splitter, the front fascia and the rear wing will be made to try to bring the Camaro into closer alignment with its rivals.

“Consultation has taken place with the three homologation teams, and the change will be implemented for the Tasmania round,” Supercars motorsport chief Tim Edwards said.

“Further to this, Supercars will continue to investigate small adjustments to the Camaro that would allow us to significantly reduce the size of the balance parity box.”

But the scale of Chevrolet’s task to become a Supercars frontrunner is far larger than some parity tweaks.

CHEVROLET’S DIRE STATISTICS

After having powered Triple Eight to the last two teams titles and to the 2024 drivers championship — plus top spot on last season’s pre-finals drivers title table — Chevrolet has suffered a remarkable decline in form.

Despite this being Toyota’s first season in the sport, the Chevrolet is, by several metrics, the worst performing marque in the series.

The gap is particularly evident in qualifying.

Gap to fastest (combined manufacturers)

1. Ford: +0.001 seconds

2. Toyota: +0.289 seconds

3. Chevrolet: +0.376 seconds

The above statistic averages the gap between each brand’s fastest car and the fastest overall time in every qualifying session this year, regardless of team.

Not only is Chevrolet almost 0.4 seconds off the pace, but it’s even behind Toyota.

Breaking down these averages by team shows Team 18 is almost half a second off pole, though it also demonstrates that it’s perhaps slightly closer to the leading pack given no team is dominating the sport.

It also shows, however, that it’s behind the lead Toyota team.

Gap to fastest

1. Dick Johnson Racing (Ford): +0.176 seconds

2. Grove (Ford): +0.178 seconds

3. Triple Eight (Ford): +0.224 seconds

4. Blanchard Racing Team (Ford): +0.239 seconds

5. Walkinshaw (Toyota): +0.296 seconds

6. Team 18 (Chevrolet): +0.470 seconds

7. Tickford (Ford): +0.478 seconds

8. Matt Stone Racing (Chevrolet): +0.542 seconds

9. Brad Jones Racing (Toyota): +0.734 seconds

10. PremiAir (Chevrolet): +0.869 seconds

11. Erebus (Chevrolet): +0.900 seconds

Of more concern to GM, though, is that the above data further shows Team 18 a long way ahead of the other Chevrolet teams. That suggests there’s much more to this underperformance than parity concerns — more on that later.

Worse, and perhaps indicative of the need for this weekend’s further parity tweaks, is that the gap is getting wider, not narrower, with the below metric creating a trajectory based on the moving average.

Rate of improvement (combined manufacturers)

1. Toyota: improving by 0.030 seconds per race

2. Ford: steady

3. Chevrolet: degrading by 0.028 seconds per race

That much is evident from each brand’s average qualifying result. While the Mustang’s 10 poles from 13 sessions makes it the clear leader on this count, the Supra has been consistently a better performer than the Camaro — and, remarkably, has the fewest top-three qualifying results.

Qualifying

Average best: Ford: 1.2; Toyota: 5.2; Chevrolet: 6.2

Average top-10 appearances: Ford: 6.8; Chevrolet: 1.8; Toyota: 1.5

Total top-three appearances: Ford: 31; Toyota, 5; Chevrolet: 3.

These trends are all clear in race conditions too, with only its numerical advantage over Toyota — eight cars compared to five — keeping it marginally ahead in terms of top-10 finishes.

Races

Average best finish: Ford: 1.2; Toyota: 5.0; Chevrolet: 6.1

Average top 10 finishes: Ford: 6.0; Chevrolet: 2.1; Toyota: 1.9

Average closest car to winner: Ford: 0.3s; Toyota: 10.4s; Chevrolet: 16.1s

Despite the numerical advantage, Toyota is scoring more heavily inside the top 10 than Chevrolet.

Points

Average score from top-10 finishes: Ford: 419.4 pts; Toyota: 122.0 pts; Chevrolet: 114.4 pts

Average score from best three finishers: Ford: 249.4 pts; Toyota: 152.8 pts; Chevrolet: 147.7 pts

IS IT ALL JUST PARITY?

The above data tells us several things.

There’s a very positive picture painted for Toyota here. While engine reliability and performance questions remain, the Supra is clearly in the ballpark, and Walkinshaw is doing a strong job of representing the brand as the homologation team.

But the contrasting fortunes of old rivals Ford and General Motors is more interesting.

GM’s loss of Triple Eight is clearly part of the story. However, given T8 not the outright fastest Mustang and is being closely challenged by Grove on the title table, it’s also obviously not all of it.

Parity of course must be part of it, as the series itself has found after extensive testing between the opening rounds of the season.

But then again, the gaps in the above metrics are in some cases so large that this can’t be all of the story either, otherwise far larger changes would be being made.

So what other problems are there?

None of this speaks to the capacity of the teams.

Between them, the current crop of GM teams have won just 25 races in total. Of those wins, 19 belong to Erebus, which is also the only Chevrolet title-winner still with the brand.

Ford, on the other hand, counts all of the sport’s traditional grandees among its brands. Triple Eight, for example, has more than 280 wins under its belt on its own.

That’s not commentary on the quality of the people behind these teams, but it’s undeniable that Ford is capitalising on having the sport’s best funded, largest and most historically significant brands in its stable.

Erebus boss Barry Ryan, though, believes that General Motors is currently being let down by a lack of star power, having lost frontrunners Will Brown and Broc Feeney to Ford during the off-season.

“I’ll be totally honest: we haven’t got any A-grade drivers,” he told MotorRacing 360 last month. “Some of the drivers won’t like hearing that, but they’re not A-grade drivers. We haven’t got multiple winners in our GM camp.”

Ironically three of the other six Camaro drivers were previously Erebus full-timers.

Certainly General Motors is aware that it lacks star power, with nine-time winner Matt Payne rumoured to be the subject of an intense recruitment campaign.

But Anton de Pasquale’s efforts also deserve acknowledgment.

The 10-time race winner can mount a compelling argument that he’s getting the most from the Camaro package, being by far the brand’s best performer.

He’s the only Chevrolet driver to have qualified on pole this year so far and has three top-three starts for a quali average of 7.8. No other GM driver has started higher than sixth, while Jack Le Brocq is the next-best GM qualifier with an average return of 13.3.

De Pasquale is the only GM driver to win a race, his victory in Melbourne also representing the marque’s only podium for the season. His 10 top-10 finishes from 13 starts is also clearly ahead of the rest. Only Le Brocq’s eight comes close; no other Chevrolet driver has more than three.

There are several complicating factors to the statistics, though.

The first is that the manufacturers are unevenly represented, with the grid comprising 11 Ford entries (45.8 per cent), eight Chevrolet entries (33.3 per cent) and five Toyota entries (20.8 per cent). Fewer entries naturally reduces opportunity.

But the drivers in the mix are also unbalanced. For example, three of the Chevrolet drivers (37.5 per cent) are rookies, whereas Ford brands are blooding only two young guns (18.2 per cent). There are no rookies at Toyota.

Parity is part of the problem, but there’s also clearly much more to it than that.

With five rounds and 15 races stretching between now and the Enduro Cup, there’s time still for Chevrolet to improve, find form and make a genuine finals charge.

But there’s a lot of work to do before it recovers its status as a Supercars force.