FORD’S MUSTANG has been dominating Supercars this year and it’s naturally created plenty of talk.
It was inevitable given the hype surrounding Ford’s factory racing return in Australia and how much analysis was placed on the Mustang Supercar within the last year or so.
Yes, there’s no doubt the ‘Stang is a quick car, and has helped reinvigorate several competitors who weren’t quite so invigorated last year.
But delve into the numbers, especially in qualifying, and it’s clear that it’s not necessarily just the ‘Stang that is delivering the early-season Ford domination of the season.
It’s more the driver of Car 17 doing the business much, much better than anyone else.
The simple fact is that at the moment we’re six qualifying sessions into the season and it is the Champ who has truly been the difference between not just Ford and Holden this year, but between the No. 17 Ford and everyone else.
Lets crunch the numbers.
McLaughlin qualified third for race one in Adelaide, 0.3633s from pole after an uncharacteristically poor shootout lap on Saturday.
However, he turned that around on Sunday to grab pole by 0.26s, meaning he left Adelaide with an overall qualifying deficit of just 0.0996s.
Qualifying in Melbourne was another story all together, the rapid-fire 10-minute sessions netting McLaughlin three poles for the four races, two of them by substantial margins.
Pole for race three was by 0.3614s, while he edged Chaz Mostert for the top spot in qualifying for race four by just 0.0128s. It was in qualifying for race five of the championship, however, where an astonishing lap saw him crush the field.
McLaughlin’s 50th pole came with a lap 0.5224 seconds quicker than Cam Waters in second, a margin that even over the second longest lap of the season is nearly unfathomable in this modern era of parity competition.
He missed pole for race six by a scant 0.0872s thanks to a last-lap Chaz flyer, but still leaves the second event of the championship with a net qualifying advantage of 0.7 seconds over the whole field.
He’s also smashed his teammate in the inter-team qualifying battle. Fabian Coulthard grabbed pole in Adelaide for race one, but lost his shootout time in qualifying for race two after kerb hopping – though he trailed McLaughlin by 0.14 seconds in regular qualifying.
Comfortably beaten on lap time in all four sessions this weekend in Albert Park, Coulthard has now qualified an average of 0.26s behind his teammate each session this year – though the average deficit was 0.44 seconds across Melbourne’s four sessions.
Comprehensive, to say the least.
The clearest point that it’s McLaughlin is the difference so far this year was in qualifying for race five, where the Kiwi smoked the field and grabbed pole by half-a-second.
Sure, Cam Waters was second in another Mustang, but he was only 0.06s faster than the Holden Commodores of Tim Slade and Nick Percat – Brad Jones Racing continuing to impress with strong early-season form.
Fabian Coulthard was next – 0.01s behind – with Jamie Whincup the same margin behind the second DJR Team Penske entry.
Just 0.5 seconds covered the 10 cars from second to eleventh; seven of them Commodores and three of them Mustangs.
And while Ford would have scored pole for every round even if McLaughlin wasn’t on the grid this year, removing the No. 17 car makes things a whole lot closer.
Shane van Gisbergen would have been on pole for race two in Adelaide, while qualifying for race four of the season in Melbourne would have seen Jamie Whincup second, 0.06s behind Chaz Mostert.
Tim Slade would have started second after qualifying 0.06s behind Cameron Waters in qualifying for race five, while Whincup would have started second for race six, too.
All of a sudden, it doesn’t look quite so much like smashing by the Blue Oval brigade.
Does the Mustang have an advantage? Possibly. Probably. Definitely in race pace – though the same could be said for the ZB Commodore at the same point of the season twelve months ago.
It’s only sensible that Supercars take a look at the relative performance balance between the various cars, and it’s only natural that the teams being beaten are going to be complaining.
But in my eyes there’s just too many variables, at least at this point of the season, to accurately judge whether the Mustang does or does not have a significant performance advantage.
We don’t know is how much the technical changes relating to the banning of twin (or multiple) springs have affected several teams in the paddock, for instance.
We’ll wait until after Phillip Island, when the field has had a crack at four different circuits and a range of different conditions, before concern mounts about Ford’s slippery new racer having a leg up on an otherwise even competition.
In the meantime, we’ll continue to revel in the utter smashing that Scott McLaughlin is delivering the field this year, parity imbalance or not.
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