Whincup: Supercars needs Triple Eight to rival dominant Penske

There were signs of improvement from factory Holden team Triple Eight last weekend in Perth, with Whincup and Shane van Gisbergen finishing fourth and fifth on Friday night before Whincup grabbed a well-crafted second on Saturday night.

Whincup hailed it as a 'most improved' performance after its struggles at Phillip Island, but Penske still took a pair of victories.

Penske grabbed a one-two on Friday through Fabian Coulthard and Scott McLaughlin, and McLaughlin then added an eighth win of the season on Saturday.

The squad's return is now 10 victories from 12 races and four one-twos in the last six, compared to a solitary victory for Triple Eight through van Gisbergen in Tasmania.

Whincup said: "The engineers have done a fantastic job to turn things around and give us competitive pace this weekend, but the next step isn't a click of the dampers or click of a roll bar, there's a lot more involved.

"The team next door [Penske] has absolutely raised the game and they're in another league at the moment.

"I feel that for the good of the sport it's up to us to do the something and step up to the challenge.

"It's fantastic to beat everyone else but if we are serious, we need to make some big changes to beat car #17 [McLaughlin] at a consistent level.

"We feel good about maximising [the Perth] weekend with the tools we had, but again, when we get back, we will sit down as a team and work out how we can get more tools in the toolbox."

Whincup added that he's not expecting an in-form McLaughlin to make Penske easy to catch.

"It's pretty straight forward [for McLaughlin], just work one week at a time, go into the next one and go as hard as you can," he said.

"It's really up to us to step up and make a battle of it. If we can do that everyone will win."

The Mustang, homologated by DJR Team Penske, has been through two parity adjustments during the team's dominant stretch.

The Ford had a re-positioning of ballast before Tasmania and a reduction in downforce heading to Perth.