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Supercars confirms Sandown Super5000 demo

The Super5000 car will make its public debut at this weekend’s Sandown 500, Supercars has confirmed.

Super5000

Super5000

Supercars

Super5000 steering wheel
Super5000 rear detail
Formula Thunder 5000 testing
Tim Macrow tests the Formula Thunder 5000
Tim Macrow tests the Formula Thunder 5000

The car, modelled on Formula 5000 racers from the 1970s and powered by a Supercars-spec V8 engine, will hit the Melbourne circuit for a demonstration run during this weekend’s endurance season opener.

It will be its first public outing for the car designed by Oscar Fiorinotto’s Supashock company, and follows a number of private tests with the likes of Garth Tander, Lee Holdsworth, and Alex Davison.

According to a report on the Supercars website, the Tander will drive the car at Sandown.

“We haven’t focused on building what I would call the fastest widget in the box, but it’s certainly going to be the most entertaining,” Fiorinotto told the official series website.

“We’ve developed a project that is high-drag [aerodynamically], to promote really good passing, it’s easy to drive, good gearbox, really good solid mechanical grip as well, because everything is designed in-house.

“It’s got our own suspension, it’s got a very unique suspension system, so it doesn’t run roll bars, it runs its roll control through its dampers. It puts its power down beautifully, and it conforms to the FIA safety standards.

“It sounds great, it looks good. I think it’s achieved targets in the sense that it was to deliver a highly entertaining product, rather than just another open-wheeler.”

While the car has been built with genuine production in mind, there is still no guarantee that its current form is the one that will underpin a planned retro-themed open-wheeler category next season.

After a controversial launch, the Supercars-run Super5000 series recently joined forces with an existing and hugely similar project known as Formula Thunder 5000.

The FT5000 prototype uses a Swift chassis and a crate engine, as opposed to the bespoke Lola-inspired chassis and Supercars-spec engine in the Super5000 car.

It’s yet to be determined which aspects of which car will ultimately make up the technical package used for the planned joint series next year.

The FT5000 prototype has already completed more than 1000 kilometres of testing, and made its public debut at Sydney Motorsport Park just under a year ago. 

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