The northern swing for the Repco Supercars Championship kicks off this weekend with the Darwin Triple Crown.
For the second year running the Darwin round serves as the official Indigenous round for Supercars.
Following in the footsteps of the major Aussie footy codes, the Indigenous round marks a sporting celebration of First Nations culture.
Teams are required to run a special Indigenous livery with a spectacular rollout having taken place over the past week.
The tropical heat will be a talking point across the weekend, this the first time temperatures will be more than cold or mild since the season-opening Newcastle 500.
There the likes of Shane van Gisbergen, Will Brown and David Reynolds all struggled in the heat with these new Gen3 cars, while Triple Eight was disqualified from race 1 due to an illegally-placed dry ice box.
For Darwin, T8 has modified its system to ensure it is legal, while Erebus Motorsport and Grove Racing have followed T8’s lead by running a dry ice box alongside the electric ChillOut driver cooling system.
The rest of the teams run a traditional dry ice system for driver cooling.
The reprieve for the drivers could be the sprint format, with the Triple Crown to be decided over three 35-lap races.
There is no Top 10 Shootout this time around, with the grid for Saturday’s race to be decided by a three-part, knock-out qualifying session.
Back-to-back, 15-minute qualifying sessions will then determined the grids for Sunday’s two heats.
As for form, Gen3 continues to leave a number of question marks heading into each round.
Erebus has been the team to beat more often than not so far this season, with Brodie Kostecki and Will Brown leading the standings.
The team was set to run an evaluation day before Darwin, however that was rained out.
That could hand an advantage to T8, which has been the best of the rest so far and got a full day of testing at Queensland Raceway with both cars.
Parity is also likely to be a talking point this weekend, with ongoing concerns over the engine performance of the Ford, and a very long front straight to contend with.
A new engine map will be run by the Ford teams as the wait for a more permanent solution continues.
2023 Supercars Darwin Triple Crown session times
All times local (GMT +9:30)
Friday June 16
8:10-8:25 Combined Sedans – Practice
8:45-9:15 Australian Superbike Championship – Practice 1
9:35-9:55 Aussie Racing Cars – Practice
10:05-10:30 Carrera Cup – Practice 1
10:45-11:15 Supercars – Practice 1
11:35-11:50 Combined Sedans – Qualifying
12:10-12:40 Australian Superbike Championship – Practice 2
13:00-13:20 Aussie Racing Cars – Qualifying
13:30-13:55 Carrera Cup – Practice 2
14:05-14:35 Supercars – Practice 2
14:55-15:05 Combined Sedans – Race 1
15:25-16:00 Australian Superbike Championship – Practice 3
Saturday June 17
8:25-8:45 Australian Superbike Championship – Qualifying 1
8:50-9:05 Australian Superbike Championship – Qualifying 2
9:25-9:45 Aussie Racing Cars – Race 1
9:55-10:07 Carrera Cup – Qualifying 1
10:13-10:25 Carrera Cup – Qualifying 2
10:35-10:45 Combined Sedans – Race 2
10:55-11:15 Aussie Racing Cars – Race 2
11:30-11:45 Supercars – Qualifying 1
11:50-12:05 Supercars – Qualifying 2
12:10-12:20 Supercars – Qualifying 3
12:40-13:20 Australian Superbike Championship – Race 1
13:40-14:00 Aussie Racing Cars – Race 3
14:10-14:35 Carrera Cup – Race 1
15:25-16:23 Supercars – Race 1
Sunday June 18
7:55-8:10 Combined Sedans – Race 3
8:30-9:10 Australian Superbike Championship – Race 2
9:30-9:45 Supercars – Qualifying (Race 2)
9:50-10:05 Supercars – Qualifying (Race 3)
10:20-10:45 Carrera Cup – Race 2
11:00-11:20 Aussie Racing Cars – Race 4
11:50-12:48 Supercars – Race 2
13:10-13:50 Australian Superbike Championship – Race 3
14:10-14:35 Carrera Cup – Race 3
15:25-16:23 Supercars – Race 3