Jones' case against lower tyre pressures

BRAD Jones once upon a time was a supporter of lowering the minimum tyre pressure in Supercars, but that stance is no more.

Jones feels that way from an overall entertainment standpoint, but he also admits the move from 17psi to 15 for selected rounds in 2024 hurt his eponymous team.

For BJR has tended to produce cars that are better at minimising degradation over a stint than maximising ultimate one-lap performance, and that advantage was somewhat offset by the mid-season rule tweak.

“With our cars, they traditionally have always been very kind to the rear tyres so after 10 laps of a race, our cars would start to move forward,” the veteran team owner said on the most recent BJR Run Down podcast episode.

“Once they dropped the tyre pressure, I felt like that neutralised us until further into the race and by then it was starting to get too late, so we really struggled.”

It was decided that dipping below 17psi would now be appropriate given the reduced aerodynamics and thus loads in play with the Gen3-spec Supercars.

It also tied into Supercars general manager of motorsport Tim Edwards’ philosophy to facilitate the ability for drivers to push hard lap after lap, as opposed to the degradation-orientated approach of his predecessor Adrian Burgess that created variances but led to tyre management.

“I used to be very much in favour of lower tyre pressures, but I think one of the problems that we have with Gen3 is, because all of the components on the car are the same no matter what brand you run, to enable passing you need to have a bit of a gap,” explained Jones.

“I think you need cars to either chew up their tyres faster or do something so you can see some passing.

“We saw at Bathurst with only one Safety Car, passing was really, really difficult… we need to do things to encourage passing in my opinion and that probably means I’d be more inclined to blow the tyres up a little bit.

“If you look at NASCAR, they are a category that when you listen to the people talk on the podcasts that we listen to, they always talk about needing more tyre deg.

“And we used to say that, but now I feel like we have gone the opposite direction where we’re trying to get consistency.”

Jones’ points came with the measured disclaimer that “it’s really easy to have an opinion but not so easy to get the right answer”.