Boost and WAU end partnership
09 Jan 2019
Boost Mobile's major sponsorship of Garry Rogers Motorsport in 2019 will not be alongside an ongoing relationship with Walkinshaw Andretti United.
The telco joined what was then Walkinshaw Racing during the 2017 campaign, and shared WAU naming rights with Mobil 1 last year.
Its focus now shifts entirely to GRM, which
Founder Peter Adderton indicated the WAU alliance ended on good terms, but that factors including sharing naming rights were considered.
"Ryan [Walkinshaw], Andretti and United have done a great job in putting their team back into contention for real, good sponsorship dollars," Adderton told Supercars.com.
"They had their direction on where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do with the team.
"I love those guys, I'd like to consider Ryan a good friend, as I do Zak [Brown] and Michael [Andretti].
"It was a shame we couldn't re-sign with them but we had a very clear direction of what we wanted to do, and we wanted to act on that.
"We couldn't get where we needed to get to, but that's a great team, we really loved our time there and they were brilliant to us."
Thanks to Boost Mobile for their support over the last two years.
— Walkinshaw Andretti United (@FollowWAU) January 9, 2019
We’ve got some extremely exciting news and a fresh new livery for you to see soon, so stay tuned ?
Thanks as always for your support, we’ve got the best fans in the game! #WalkAndUnite #VASC pic.twitter.com/RISdvzDcYY
The Holden outfit said announcements about its 2019 partners would be made in the coming weeks, for the ZBs of Scott Pye and James Courtney.
Adderton noted Boost held discussions with a range of teams, and was even ready to sit out major sponsorship in 2019.
The eventual deal with GRM then "came about fairly quickly" from mid-December.
"As we've said from Day 1, we have a very specific vision in mind for what we want for the Boost brand and the role we want to play in Supercars," he added.
"We were very clear with all of the teams we were talking to – and we were talking to a lot of teams – that we wanted to have a young driver line-up, we wanted to have it called Boost Mobile Racing with our own naming rights and we wanted to have a two-car team.
"We talked to a lot of teams and we were willing to sit this year out if we didn't get the team and the guys we wanted.
"At the last minute, Garry and I had a conversation.
"We made it clear to Garry what we wanted and we said we want young drivers in the car and there were a bunch of young drivers to look at and obviously we'd had a relationship with Richie."
Both Stanaway, 27, and GRM incumbent James Golding, 22, are entering their second Supercars seasons in 2019.
Stanaway endured had a torrid rookie campaign with Tickford Racing, splitting with the Ford squad last month, after impressing during the 2016 and '17 PIRTEK Enduro Cups.
Golding was expected to be partnered by veteran Tander at GRM again before Wednesday's news, which likely ends the latter's full-time driving career.
