MOTORSPORT: Big Porsche promotion for Matt Campbell

Porsche has promoted Australian racer Matt Campbell  to a full factory driver next year.

Campbell will contest the five-round Intercontinental GT Challenge in a 911 GT3 R – starting with the defence of his Bathurst 12-Hour title at Mt Panorama on the first weekend of February – as well as three famous long-distance races in the United States in a 911 RSR.

His new elevated status almost certainly guarantees the 24-year-old from Warwick in Queensland a return in June to the 24 Hours of Le Mans in France, where he was a class winner on debut last year.

Campbell’s big break was winning the 2016 Carrera Cup in Australia, which led to him becoming a Porsche junior on the international scene and, for the past two seasons, one of its ‘young professionals’.

He will now be one of 18 works drivers for the prestigious German marque next year, meaning he will race for customer teams with full factory backing.
Frenchman Mathieu Jaminet, a year older than Campbell, has been similarly promoted.

The news came at the Porsche’s 2019 night of champions in Stuttgart at the weekend, when the company feted its drivers in front of its executive board and the chairman of its supervisory board, Dr Wolfgang Porsche.

The Bathurst 12-Hour, which Campbell won with New Zealand team operator-driver Earl Bamber and Belgian Laurens Vanthoor last February, will kick off the Intercontinental GT Challenge again on February 2.

The other IGTC rounds are the 24 Hours of Spa in Belgium in July, the Suzuka 10 Hours in Japan in August, the new Indianapolis Eight Hours in the US in early October and the Kyalami Nine Hours in South Africa in November.

The famous enduros in the US in which Campbell will race with Englishman Nick Tandy and Frenchman Frederic Makowiecki are the 24 Hours of Daytona on January 25, the 12 Hours of Sebring in March and the 10-hour Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta in October.

The two top Porsches from American GT racing are already slotted to go to the 88th running of the Le Mans classic in June, which is part of the World Endurance Championship.

Another of the Porsche works drivers now is Simona de Silvestro, the Swiss woman well known to Australians from racing in the Supercar Championship in recent years.

De Silvestro, is already a test and development driver for the company’s new Formula E electric open-wheeler team and now will represent the company in German GT racing next season.

Apart from the 18 works drivers, Porsche will continue to have two ‘young professionals’, both Europeans, and two juniors – one of them New Zealander Jaxon Evans, who will be in his second season on the international scene in the Porsche Supercup after winning the 2018 Australian Carrera Cup.

At its night of champions the company also honoured the Australian who won the inaugural 10-race Porsche Esports Supercup, Joshua Rogers.

It also bade farewell to its German veteran sports car champion Timo Bernhard, New Zealander Brendon Hartley, an outright winner at Le Mans who has joined Roger Penske’s son Jay’s Formula E team after helping develop Porsche’s 99X FE car for its recent debut, and Jorg Bergmeister, another German racer known as ‘Mr 911’.

The Adelaide-built Brabham BT62 supercar was far and away the fastest machine at The Bend Classic in South Australia at the weekend.

Driven by Ash Walsh, the BT62 won the final one-lap shootout on the west circuit of the Shahin family facility with a time of 1 minute 15.0214 seconds.

The runner-up Reynard 94D open-wheeler driven by Brenton Ramsay clocked 1.18.7189 and an ex-Alan Jones Williams FW07 F1 car 1.19.2731 in the hands of Paul Faulkner.

The BT62’s maiden success on Australian soil follows its first-up win at Brands Hatch in Britain in October.

The Shannons Adelaide Rally – the other half of the recast Adelaide motorsport festival this year – was comfortably won by a Dodge Viper Extreme driven by John and Janet Ireland.

However, there was less than 10 seconds between the second-placed Subaru of Ben Newman and Andy Sarandis and the Nissan GTR of Trevor Macleod and Scott Hunter.

Having slipped a place to fifth in this year’s Formula 1 constructors’ world championship, Renault is shaking up the chassis side of its engineering team for carsales.com.au global ambassador Daniel Ricciardo’s second season with the French manufacturer.

Nick Chester, who has spent almost 20 years with the team in its various guises – as Benetton, Renault (including world titles with Fernando Alonso in 2005-06), then Lotus and now Renault again – has gone after having been the chassis technical director since 2013 and earlier engineering director.

Pat Fry will join next year as technical director after having most recently been with McLaren, the team that rebounded this year to overtake Renault in the constructors’ championship using the same power unit.

Dirk De Beer, who had a big hand in the Lotus cars with which Kimi Raikkonen won races in 2012 and, in Melbourne, in 2013, has rejoined as head of aerodynamics after a stint at Ferrari and Williams, departing there – along with tech chief Paddy Lowe – when its 2018 car was a dismal flop.

De Beer replaces departed Peter Machin, while James Rogers has been promoted to chief aerodynamicist.
Ricciardo’s new teammate for next season, Frenchman Esteban Ocon, tested with Renault in Abu Dhabi last week after the final grand prix of the season, completing 205 laps – almost four race distances.