Pither seeking a seat in Supercars
"There are definitely seats available, it's a matter of getting the stars to align." Chris Pither
New Zealand’s Chris Pither is looking to get back into a main game Supercars seat in 2018, but will go for a spot the Super2 Series if he misses out.
Having lost his spot as a main driver when the Kiwi team Super Black Racing collapsed at the end of last season, Pither was left without a main drive for 2017.
He managed to pick up a spot as a co-driver for Dale Wood at Erebus in the endurance rounds and is back at Bathurst again this weekend, but he is looking for a spot back in the big time.
‘‘I think there are always opportunities out there, it’s about finding something that works for everyone involved,’’ the Palmerston North-born Pither said.
‘‘There are definitely seats available, it’s a matter of getting the stars to align. There’s not a whole lot of opportunities fulltime, but anything is possible.
‘‘So I’ll keep pushing and if I can’t get back in there fulltime, I’ll hopefully at least have a co-drive role again, I would like to be with Erebus again and hopefully be in a Super2 programme at the same time.’’
The Super2 Series is second tier of Supercars, with the teams having smaller budgets and racing older cars.
It’s still highly competitive and driving in it would help Pither to keep a spot at a team for the three Supercars endurance rounds at Sandown, Bathurst and Gold Coast. However, it’s not the same as competing in the Supercars category all season long, but it was only through the collapse of Super Black Racing, rather than poor driving that cost him his spot in the main game.
Super Black Racing was set up by Tony Lentino in 2014, with the aim of helping New Zealand drivers.
However, the team’s future became uncertain when Lentino passed away from cancer last July.
The team’s Racing Entitlement Contract - the licence to race in the championship - was sold to Tim Blanchard after it was confirmed Jason Bright had taken the team’s spot at Prodrive Racing Australia.
It wasn’t until the final round of the 2016 season, in Sydney on December 2, that Super Black Racing gave up hope of competing again and by that stage all the seats for 2017 had been sorted.
‘‘It was obviously disappointing, but there were a couple of real highlights through last season,’’ reflected Pither.
‘‘We had a good at Perth, qualified fourth and finished seventh. We had a number of good race results throughout the year, but obviously the highlight was pole position at Queensland Raceway.
‘‘It was an unfortunate and sad scenario with Tony passing away from cancer.
‘‘That was ultimately the demise of the team, he was a great driving force behind it and made it happen.
‘‘I was holding hope that the team could have carried on into this year, but that wasn’t to be.
‘‘The disappointing part for me was that it did fall apart quite late.
‘‘We were talking about how we could keep it alive, but it wasn’t to be and at that point there weren’t many opportunities to piece something together and find something for this year.
‘‘So from that point I started looking at co-drive opportunities and even at that point I was lucky to get a drive, because it seems like teams are more proactive at trying to lock their drivers in really early.
Of more immediate concern for Pither in this weekend’s Bathurst, where he’s optimistic about having a good result on Sunday.
‘‘I’m excited to be here,’’ he said.
‘‘I’m really looking forward to the weekend ahead, off the back of a promising round at Sandown.
‘‘We had a racey sort of car and moved forward through the weekend.
‘‘Our pace in qualifying wasn’t quite the same as our race pace, we ended up 18th in qualifying with Dale but managed to move forward from there and actually were fifth at the start of the main race.
‘‘The car was good throughout my co-drive race and I managed to pass nine cars, which was fun and Dale moved it up to seventh and strong start in the main race moved us up to seventh before the stoppage.
‘‘Then we had a tyre failure, which lost us track position and also threw our strategy out and we ended up finishing 17th.’’