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BoP and Compensation Weight Update: Queensland Raceway
Pre-round parity changes are set to add another element of uncertainty into the delicately poised battle over the Supercheap Auto TCR Australia Series title.
The cars of leading title contenders Ben Bargwanna, reigning champion Josh Buchan and points leader Zac Soutar will all undergo changes in spec for this weekend’s round at Queensland Raceway.
Just 49 points – less than a win in either Race 1 or Race 3 this weekend – covers the first six drivers in the standings.
Soutar heads the standings on 414 points, with Buchan 21 points adrift in second and Bargwanna 31 points off the lead in third.
But Bargwanna will have a chance to hit back with the lightest car in the field, while Soutar and Buchan are armed with two of the heaviest.
TCR achieves parity between the different models of car via a Balance of Performance system that varies engine performance, car weight and ride height.
Drivers also earn success ballast – Compensation Weight, as its called in TCR rules – via success at preceding rounds.
The winner of the previous round cops an additional 40kg to their model of car’s set weight, second and third place get 30kg each, fourth place gets 20kg, and fifth place carries an extra 10kg.
Anyone who finishes outside the top five doesn’t cop any extra weight at the following round.
The Compensation Weight doesn’t add up from round to round though; a driver that wins one round and finishes second in the next, doesn’t have to cop 70kg at the next!
So what does this all mean for Queensland Raceway?
The news is great if you’re Bargwanna, whose Peugeot led the standings after Phillip Island but slipped to third after a difficult run at The Bend.
Global TCR bosses have since changed the BoP on the Peugeot 308 TCR, handing it an additional 10kg of weight and raising its ride height by 10mm.
But Bargwanna’s ninth-place round finish at The Bend drops his compensation weight from 20kg to zero, so his #71 Peugeot will be running 10kg lighter overall.
He and Garry Rogers Motorsport teammate Aaron Cameron will also be racing the lightest cars this weekend, with their Peugeots weighing in at 1215kg.
Brad Harris is another beneficiary. No changes have been made to the BoP of his Honda, but fifth at The Bend means his compensation weight goes from 40kg (for winning Phillip Island) to 20kg (fifth at The Bend).
The reverse is true for Soutar and Buchan, who both enjoyed strong runs in South Australia.
Soutar’s Audi cops an extra 10kg courtesy this weekend; fourth place at Phillip Island gave him 20kg to carry at The Bend, while his second-place finish there bumps his total up to 30kg at Queensland Raceway.
Meantime, Buchan will go from carrying 10kg (sixth at Phillip Island) to 40kg after winning The Bend round overall, with the #1 Hyundai tipping the scales as the heaviest on the grid at 1315kg.
Buchan’s title defence got off to a slow start, a mechanical issue in pre-season testing forcing him out of the championship-winning Sedan and into the team’s i30 N Hatch for the first three rounds.
He returned to the Sedan for The Bend and finished inside the top three in all three races to win the round overall – despite starting the weekend with a five-place grid penalty.
“I’m confident we have a great race car that can overcome the weight penalty, but I know it won’t be easy,” Buchan said.
“If we can get through this weekend relatively unscathed then it puts us in a really strong position for the remaining two rounds at Sydney Motorsport Park and Mount Panorama at Bathurst, which are two of our best tracks and where we have always targeted in our push for back-to-back titles.”
The downside for Buchan is that the Queensland Raceway round has not been kind to HMO Customer Racing in the past.
Hyundai’s sole top-three race finish came courtesy of Luke King’s privateer entry in 2022, but the HMO squad has just a pair of fourth-placings to its name from the three TCR rounds held there previously.
Last year, Buchan equalled the team’s best round result with fifth place, via a mix of fifth and sixth-place race finishes.
“Historically, Queensland Raceway has been pretty tough on us,” Buchan said.
“But I’m back in the Hyundai i30 Sedan N again this weekend and hoping to keep up the front-running form we showed at The Bend and banish the hoodoo that this track holds over us.”
Round 5 of the 2024 Supercheap Auto TCR Australia Series at EVENTelec Race Queensland gets underway with a pair of 30-minute practice sessions on Friday, followed by Qualifying and Race 1 on Saturday, then Races 2 and 3 on Sunday.
All the weekend action can be watched live on 7plus on Saturday and Sunday.