Dane says Supercars

must take action

Supercars series heavyweight Roland Dane has warned that the category’s management must take urgent action to nd a replacement for the current Ford racecars.

Asked when the current impasse preventing Mustangs from replacing the Falcons will become a crisis, the Red Bull Holden Racing Team boss told AMC, “If we don’t have at least one new shape on the grid next year we’ve got a real problem.”

Speaking on the eve of the opening round of the 2018 championship which saw the debut of his Triple Eight Race Engineering-developed Holden ZB Commodore racer, Dane predicted that opposing Falcons, based on the FGX model which ceased production in 2016, would look ‘very second hand’.

“Whenever you introduce a new car like the ZB Commodore the existing cars around it will immediately look old. That’s just the way it is.

“For the incoming CEO of Supercars, nding a replacement (for the Falcons) should be at the very top, or near the top, of his agenda.”

Dane recently resigned from the Board of Supercars, after seven years of service. Freed, perhaps, from the constraints of that position, he has become more vocal about the lack of proactivity by the category’s managers when faced with an uncertain future.

“Supercars should decide whether it is going to be involved in the process of assisting in the development and validation of a new car,” he said.

“When the VE Commodore was developed for racing by Walkinshaw in 2007, Holden paid for the whole thing. But the days of having a manufacturer come in and fund 100 per cent of development costs are over. The business model for manufacturer involvement has changed.

“So there’s probably a moment in time when the category as a whole needs to play a bigger part.”

Dane points out that there is a precedent for Supercars investing in the development of a new car.

“Everyone forgets that in 2012-13, Supercars gave $1 million to Kelly Racing towards the development of the Nissan V8 engine.”

There is also a pragmatic reason to do it this way: if a new manufacturer comes in and partners with a two-car team it is under no obligation to make the cars available beyond that team. That was the situation with Volvo and GRM, and when Volvo departed at the end of 2016 the two S60s departed with it.

But Dane points out that if Supercars contributes to the development costs of a new racecar then there is an obligation to make it available to any team which asks.

“If Ford does, nally, grant the IP to a team introduce a new shape – be it Mustang or whatever – I think there would be of enormous concern if that wasn’t made generally available to all the teams who wanted to buy it.”

Triple Eight bore almost all the seven gure cost of developing the ZB racecar because “that was the only way it was going to happen.”

“Otherwise we were facing a situation in which we would be running a car no longer on sale. Now you can do that – but can’t do it if you want to be the Holden Racing Team and receive sponsorship for being so.

“We received some initial assistance from Holden Design at Fishermans Bend in terms of shaping the car because there were some complexities involved in taking a front wheel-drive transverse-engine car and making the shape t a rear wheel-drive car with a longitudinal engine. But beyond that we did it all ourselves.

“To give you one example, because the bill just landed on my desk yesterday, we had to design new headlight units because the production ones were far too heavy. The cost of that, including the design and tooling for the injection moulding, was $50,000.

“Now we went ahead and developed a new car but not every team has the nancial resources or the ability to do that.

“So if we are going to have new cars, Supercars will probably need to contribute to the expense of developing them.”

As AMC closed for press, Dane elaborated on his desire to see a compatible new Ford model on the grid, telling Auto Action the Mondeo was the “best t to the template of a touring car from that stable at the moment.”