MOTORSPORT: Restructure at top V8 Supercar team

Race engineers promoted at Triple Eight
Dominant V8 Supercar team Triple Eight Race Engineering has promoted the men who have engineered Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes to so much success in recent years, but Roland Dane is retaining the team principal’s reins for now.

Mark Dutton, who has been Whincup’s engineer in all of his five title-winning seasons, has become team manager. Lowndes’ engineer, Jerome Moore, has become chief designer but will continue to run Lowndes’ car for a seventh season. Ludo Lacroix remains in the key technical director position.

Team owner Dane handed over the team principal role while Adrian Burgess was with the Brisbane-based outfit but took charge again in the middle of last season when Burgess signed with rival Holden factory-supported team Holden Racing Team – which he has now joined after several months on “gardening leave”.

Dane indicated recently that he had been contemplating installing another team principal but has opted to keep his hands on the controls for now while grooming the younger blood, with Dutton the obvious successor for the role.

Dutton and Moore have both been with Triple Eight for a decade. For much of that time Triple Eight competed as Team Vodafone but last year it became
Red Bull Racing and will continue in that form for at least another two seasons.

David Cauchi, who has been with the team since 2008 and worked for Lucas Dumbrell Motorsport when it was a customer team of Triple Eight for most of last season, will become Whincup’s engineer this year.

Davison to make Erebus debut at 12-Hour
As predicted here when Will Davison was confirmed as an Erebus Motorsport AMG Mercedes V8 Supercar driver last week, the 2009 Bathurst 1000 winner will drive one of the Erebus SLS AMG GT3s at next month’s Bathurst 12-Hour.

The February 9 enduro will be Davison’s first experience of working with his new V8 Supercar engineer Luke Mason ahead of the official test day for that series at Sydney Motorsport Park the following weekend and the championship start in Adelaide in early March. Davison said the SLS would be “a markedly different beast” to a V8 Supercar “but the key to being quick at Bathurst is experience and I’ve done a few laps around there”.

Erebus also has confirmed that German ace Bernd Schneider will return to Mt Panorama for the Bathurst 12-Hour, a year after he won the event for the team with fellow Europeans Thomas Jaeger and Alexander Roloff.

“We hope to be able to repeat the performance, although the entry list includes some more very successful international teams this year, so it will be no easy task,” Schneider said.

Erebus has not named the other two drivers for each of its two entries, but Davison’s new V8 Supercar teammate Lee Holdsworth is certain to be one of his co-drivers. The team also is likely to find a spot for German Maro Engel, who has been dropped from its V8 Supercar line-up after one season.

Peterhansel, six times a Dakar winner on motorcycles and five times on four wheels, including the past two years, has won two stages in the past three days and was second to Qatar’s Nasser Al-Attiyah in another MINI All4 on the other.

Peterhansel beat Al-Attiyah by 2 minutes 17 seconds on the latest stage in Chile. That was the ninth of the event and the first wholly in Chile, from Calama across the Atacama Desert and then downhill to Iquique.

Roma was third for the day despite getting stranded in the sand dunes at one point, after having suffered two punctures the previous day.

The Spaniard has led the rally since last Thursday but Peterhansel has made up almost half an hour on him in the past four days, including 11 minutes on the latest stage. Argentinean Orlando Terranova is third in another MINI ahead of Al-Attiyah, but both are almost an hour off the lead.

South African Giniel de Villers again was the first non-MINI driver on stage nine, fifth in his Toyota HiLux but more than 20 minutes behind Peterhansel. De Villiers is fifth overall too while Spaniard Carlos Sainz’s two-wheel-drive SMG buggy struck mechanical problems 195km into stage nine, costing him almost two hours and leaving him eighth outright.

While Australia’s two car entries have been out of the competition since the weekend, three of the six Aussie bike riders who started the event continue to do well – Trevor O’Connor in 38th on a KTM, Allan Roberts on another KTM in 41st and Shane Diener 49th on a Yamaha.

Spaniard Marc Coma leads the bikes on a KTM ahead of countryman Joan Barreda Bort on a Honda.

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