Saturday Sleuthing: The Last #17 Shell DJR Falcon

This week's big V8 Supercar news was the announcement that Shell will back DJR Team Penske's Marcos Ambrose and the team's famous #17 Ford Falcon at next weekend's season-opening Clipsal 500 in Adelaide.

The combination of Johnson and Shell spanned a remarkable 18 seasons with the oil giant the naming rights backer of the Queensland team's familiar Sierra and Falcon racecars from 1987 to 2004.

Add to that is Team Penske's impressive history with Shell in IndyCar and NASCAR racing in the United States and it's a deal that has a lot of 'retro' about it!

So that got our resident V8 Sleuth Aaron Noonan thinking - what became of the car that last carried the #17 for DJR in Shell colours in V8 Supercar racing?

The last time we saw a Shell #17 Falcon was back in 2004 when Steven Johnson and Warren Luff were driving for the team with Johnson driving chassis DJR BA14 in the final round of '04 at Eastern Creek before the Shell deal ended at the conclusion of that season.

That particular Falcon was new for the start of 2003 and one of two brand new BA models the team constructed under the-then new 'Project Blueprint' rulebook.

Johnson raced the car right throughout '03 with Luff joining him for the endurance races at Sandown and Bathurst.

It was a tough season for the second-generation pilot coming off the back of perhaps DJR's worst year on record in 2002.

Johnson's best of the '03 season was sixth overall on the Gold Coast, which proved to be his only top 10 round result in a year where there were a lot of single 300-kilometre races rather than the multi-race, sprint length rounds of other seasons.

Johnson retained this car for the 2004 season and it was involved in the nasty multi-car shunt at Adelaide on the Sunday, set off by contact between Cameron McConville and Paul Dumbrell.

He drove it through the rest of the single driver rounds before the endurance events, picking up a sixth at Eastern Creek and an eighth overall at Pukekohe before the team debuted a new chassis at Sandown and this car was rested for the enduros.

The new car seemed to do the trick given Johnson and Luff scored a podium first time out in the Sandown 500

Johnson's previous car was pressed back into service on the Gold Coast and for the remainder of the season.

The team retained the DJR BA14 chassis for 2005 and it became Dean Canto's #71 Gatorz (eyewear) sponsored car in the Development Series - then known as the HPDC Series.

A controversial step that year by rule makers, all cars in the DVS were forced to run with an extra 100 kilograms compared to the V8 Supercars Championship machines, in a bid to break the technical link and potential extra data being generated by a team running cars in the DVS.

Not even a massive crash at Wakefield Park - where he had won Race 1 but slammed into the back of a stalled car at the start of the full reverse grid race - could slow down his title-winning charge and he became the first two-time champion in the category's short history.

The extra weight rule was banished for 2006 though this car was continued to be run by DJR in 2006 with Andrew Thompson behind the wheel.

The Formula Ford graduate - who would later win the DVS with Triple Eight in 2011 - came on strong late in the year to score pole and a round win at Bathurst before backing it up to take victory in the Phillip Island series finale.

The chassis moved to the Prodigy Motorsport team in 2007 and was raced by Jose Fernandez in Fujitsu colours with a podium result achieved at Wakefield Park before being retained by the team in 2008 and run by Damien Assaillit before race prep was taken over by Race Image.

Fernandez again ran the car at Bathurst before it was upgraded to BF spec for 2009 and raced by Drew Russell at Adelaide and Winton.

Kiwi Gene Rollinson ran it in a handful of rounds before Marcus Marshall made a one-off start in it at the final DVS round of '09 at Sydney Olympic Park - that was the car's last appearance in V8 Supercar competition.

A few years later the chassis was sold to Victorian Jason George with a mooted plan for it to appear in the V8 Touring Car Series, though this never happened and the car has done some track days but no racing.

We tracked down George this week and he confirmed some great news - it's back in its 2003 Shell Helix livery and will be fully finished very soon!

"It's just about finished," he told the V8 Sleuth.

"We're just waiting on a starter motor and a few stickers to complete it but it will be back to original once it's finished.

"I won't race it but I'll be doing private track days in it. I've spent way too much time and money on it now to race it.

"When I bought it the car had come straight from the Development Series. It had sat idle for six or eight months and I got it.

"I painted it red and have done some private track and club days in it learning how to drive it. We got it back from Queensland just before Christmas and it will be up and running soon.

"The log book for it is massive. It's been to Bathurst four times from memory, once in the main race and three times in the DVS. I had it for sale a while ago and I got a few good offers but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do.

"Then the deal came up to get it put back to original and it has a new motor, rebuilt original gearbox and the original diff."

We look forward to seeing this part of DJR history back in its full war paint soon - and how Marcos Ambrose fares in the new-look Shell Helix #17 next weekend in Adelaide.

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Saturday Sleuthing will take a break next weekend for the Clipsal 500 but will feature on the V8 Supercars website again this year on every non-race weekend.

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