The first two rounds of the Virgin Australia Supercars Championship take place on 2-3 March with the ‘Superloop Adelaide 500’; ahead of that, the pre-season open test day at Phillip Island (near Melbourne) takes place today (14 February).

Adelaide will see the race debut of the new Ford Mustang GT — and the new Xtrac P1293 control gearbox developed for the series.

Following successful testing in 2018 by teams including Nissan Motorsport, Brad Jones Racing and Tickford Racing, Berkshire-based Xtrac (www.xtrac.com) has been busy manufacturing over 50 gearboxes to support the series, with the first batch of 24 despatched in time for the Phillip Island test, which will be the first official event with all teams using the new Xtrac control gearbox.

Engineers Mark Brogden and Mark Lewis, plus technician Luke Barrington from Xtrac’s UK base, will be on hand at the test to provide gearbox maintenance training sessions and track-side technical support.

The teams will return to Phillip Island on 12-14 April for the WD-40 Phillip Island SuperSprint.

The Virgin Australia Supercars Championship is the latest series to have selected Xtrac as a sole supplier, following on from contracts already in place with IndyCar, BTCC, ACO, Brazilian Stockcar and Argentinian TC2000.

Xtrac also supplies FIA-approved transmissions to many competitors in other series around the world.