FUTURE OF THE SPORT

Q

Supercars CEO James Warburton will leave the sport soon. Your thoughts?

A

I’m extremely disappointed that James is not there anymore. He has done an extremely good job bringing the place back from where it was. Since Wayne Cattach left, the number of CEOs, with James being the exception, has been nothing short of horrendous. It really dragged the business into nowhere land. James has restructured that ... I would love to have Wayne back and so would everyone else because he was without a doubt, like Warburton, extremely well respected in the teams.

Q

One element of the sport’s future fans have been hesitant about is the Gen2 regulations where cars no longer have to be V8s. What’s your view on that?

A

If you want my honest opinion, it won’t work. I’m the only person in pit lane who has been through the eras where we went through different engines and cars et cetera in what they called the Group A days – that’s why we went to V8s, because that didn’t work. All of the team owners sat down and said where are we going to go, we all came up with the same answer, which was what was successful in the past? And it was the Ford v Holden battle of V8s. It has since been very successful and my old man was one of these people who told me “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Hence the day our cars don’t sound like a V8, I think you are going to halve the number of people sitting in the stands. Formula One has given you a bit of an idea of where it would go.