Supercars team boss Barry Ryan has made the stunning admission that Chevrolet is being flogged by Ford and Toyota in this year’s championship — and he’s blaming the drivers, not the car.
In a brutally candid and rare interview on Fox Sport’s Motorsport 360, the outspoken Erebus Motorsport chief declared that he and his fellow Camaro teams have no chance of winning races because they simply don’t have the talent behind the wheel to get it done.
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“At the end of the day — and I will be totally honest — we don’t have any A-grade drivers,” Ryan said on the latest episode of MR360.
“Some of the drivers weren’t like hearing that, but they’re not A-grade drivers. We haven’t got multiple winners in our GM camp. We know we are not ready to win.
“Give us 12 months and if GM teams are winning and we are still 20th, we will know we are doing something wrong.”
The remarks are extraordinary coming from within the Chevrolet camp, with Ryan — one of the sport’s most respected team operators — effectively conceding the manufacturer war before the parity debate has even been settled.
The opening rounds of the 2026 Repco Supercars Championship have painted a stark picture for the Camaro brigade, with Ford and Toyota leaving Cheverlot scrambling.
Beaten from pillar to post through the first three rounds, the Chevrolet contingent now fields just eight cars against 11 Fords and five Toyota after a dramatic off-season reshuffle stripped the American manufacturer of powerhouse team Triple Eight.
The Chevrolet parity gap has been enough to prompt Supercars officials to investigate performance differentials among the three manufacturers. But when pressed on whether the famous American brand deserved a parity handout to bring it back into contention, Ryan said: “Probably not.”
The candid admission is compounded by Erebus’s own complicated off-season. Ryan has elected to keep Erebus operating independently, refusing to join the broader GM alliance where Team 18 has assumed the role of homologation team despite winning just one race since 2016.
While Erebus remains the strongest of the four GM teams on raw results — boasting 12 Gen3-era wins, including the 2024 Bathurst 1000 — Ryan has made clear he sees little value in aligning with a group he believes has delivered little in return.
This season, Ryan has handed the wheel of one of his Camaros to highly-rated rookie Jobe Stewart. The team boss conceded the rookie factor was strangling their ability to find a workable setup.
“We’ve got a couple of rookie drivers, and particularly Jobe. None of our setups work anymore,” Ryan said. “We are trying to get a setup that we can work with, that he can deal with, as well as being a rookie. So, not making excuses, but we should never have changed the balance, and unfortunately, they did.”
“We’re stuck with what we’ve got for now. No one’s asking for extra downforce — we’re just asking for a shift back so we can balance the car again.”
Friday Supercars schedule live on Fox Sports 501 and Kayo
7.35am: Repco Supercars Championship Practice
12.15pm: Boost Mobile Qualifying (Race 10)
2.35pm: Repco Championship Race 10 (37 laps)
