It might look the same, but it sure doesnt drive the same, that was the verdict of Holden Racing Teams Mark Skaife on the first test run of chassis #050 a brand new race Commodore set to debut at Symmons Plains in Tasmania this weekend.
Its without doubt the best car Ive ever driven straight out of the box, Skaife said.
We spent a day testing at Winton achieving consistently strong lap times with only minimum tweaking and adjusting quite remarkable for a totally new race car. Everything felt just right.
Its our 2005 race package but we need to cover plenty of kilometres in the remaining couple of rounds this year so we can hit the ground running next season.
I guess the biggest advance over our current cars is in body shell design to give us advances in safety and maximum torsional rigidity.
Skaife said new cars usually were built specifically for the Bathurst 1000 but with that event now being part of the V8 Championship it was difficult to debut cars mid season.
With the repair of crashed cars on the agenda, its taken us 12 weeks to complete #050 and huge amounts of man-hours, but its been well worth the effort to get something out of what has been a difficult year for us.
Getting back to Tasmania on the weekend is great for the V8s and gives us a truly national championship for the first time since 1999, Skaife reflected.
HRT cracked it for a win last time there and would like to repeat the effort again.
Expect the tightest qualifying grid for the year at Symmons on a track layout that looks simple but is more complicated than you think.
It throws up great racing particularly around the notorious hairpin, which usually manages to provide grief for the unwary, he said.
