Is there still a test track advantage in Supercars?

The 2026 Supercars season shifts to Queensland Raceway, which has long been a test circuit for northern teams.

It begs the question — a debate that emerges each time Supercars heads to Ipswich — whether racing at your home test track offers an advantage.

Next weekend, Triple Eight Race Engineering (now including Objective Racing), Dick Johnson Racing, Matt Stone Racing and PremiAir Racing all roll out at a circuit they know very, very well.

The easy argument is that, because you test at the track, you have an advantage. But is it as simple as that?

Testing in Supercars is highly limited. In fact, it’s more limited than recent years. The first allotted test of the season was the pre-season hit out at Sydney Motorsport Park. There’s another in Ipswich, albeit the pre-enduro test after the race weekend.

Testing itself isn’t a performance exercise. Drivers and teams will tell you that tests are tyre-limited anyway, so it’s hard to read too much into data. What’s more, is that the Gen3 era has made testing an even tougher prospect.

Still, spending time tuning cars is important. Even then, the local Queensland teams haven’t mad much of that anyway.

Triple Eight and DJR completed new car shakedowns earlier this year, but they only had the mandated 60km to work with.

The results

We only have a year of Gen3 cars racing at Queensland Raceway to read into, and. — you guessed it — Triple Eight dominated. Broc Feeney won twice and claimed all three poles, with Will Brown winning the other race.

Before Gen3, there was no Supercars racing at the circuit between 2020 and 2024. In the decade before that, across Gen2 and Project Blueprint cars, Queensland teams won 18 races to Victorian teams’ six.

When Supercars raced at Winton — the test track for southern teams — it was much more even.

The caveat

DJR has been competitive at most circuits this season, with Brodie Kostecki a winner in Melbourne, Taupō, Christchurch and Townsville.

Triple Eight won in Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania and Perth, but is still coming to grips with the Ford Mustang.

So, seldom has a southern team — looking at the dominant Penrite Racing squad — looked better positioned to wrest control in enemy territory. However, some Victorian rivals have had an early look-in.

Oddly, two other homologation teams — Team 18 and Walkinshaw TWG Racing — have completed parity and shakedown testing at Queensland Raceway this year. A Team 18 Camaro has rolled out twice since May, while the new Toyota Supra shared the track with Triple Eight's new Ford before the season began in February.

No doubt, those teams were taking notes, even if February's conditions offer a vastly different prospect to what teams and drivers face next week.

The driver's view

When asked by Supercars.com if local teams have an advantage, 2010 Supercars champion James Courtney said: "100%. Guys who test there have done more laps there.

"They shake their cars down there, they do rookie tests there. They know where the bumps are straight out the gate. They’ll 100% be in a better position.

“But it’s been proven wrong previously, hasn't it? There's been multiple times, whether it be Winton or QR, and it's someone's home track, and then the other side destroys them.

"I don't think it's a given that you're going to go there and be the quickest guy, but they’ll have so much historical data that you can draw on that, if you're not going well, you can hopefully pull yourself out of it.”

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