Kelly opens up on driving future

Todd Kelly will continue as a factory Nissan driver next season after an upturn in form this year, he confirmed tonight on Inside Supercars.

While Kelly had a challenging season in 2014, finishing 22nd, he currently sits 11th in the standings - one place behind his brother Rick, who is the highest placed of the four Nissans.

With a top five result already under his belt, upgrades planned for the Nissans before the enduros and a team structure that allows Kelly to focus on racing, he feels the best is yet to come this year.

"[We] set the team up for me to be a driver - I've actually got no place at the track other than in the car with my helmet on!" Kelly said on Inside Supercars.

"I don't know what I'd do if I wasn't racing a car and with what we've invested with Nissan, especially with the engine, we're at the point now that I'm really confident we'll have success.

"And I want to be part of that as a driver."

Kelly's best V8 Supercars season was 2005 with the Holden Racing Team, when he finished fourth in the title fight and won the Bathurst 1000 with Mark Skaife, who joined him on the Inside Supercars panel this evening.

"Back in the days of HRT with you Skaifey, we'd go to a track and we'd actually ... hop in the car with the aim to put it on pole and get a trophy.

"It's been pretty hard the last six or eight years not to have that opportunity all the time. I want to have that back again and I don't think we're too far away."

Kelly confirmed talks of retirement last year were external to the team - and although the 35-year old admitted considering not continuing on as a driver during a difficult phase, he is ultimately proud of what he and Rick have built since 2009.

"It's amazing how fast it's gone, but we're six and a half years in to running our own team now.

"The first few years - we've been going back through the results recently with the big review we're doing - and the trajectory we were on in the early part was in the right direction.

"We changed manufacturers to Nissan [for 2013] which was a huge project - designing cars, designing engines - [but] we're back on that same path now."

The team has utilised a rolling sponsor model on the #7 Nissan Altima, and Kelly revealed that confirminga sponsor was part of the reason James Moffat had not already been locked in for next year.

Kelly spoke highly of the off-contract 30-year old, who he believes is capable of "great things", but said until certain things were in place, they couldn't sign the deal.

He did rule out running a pay driver at the team.

"We really want James to stay with the team - we don't have any intention of that not to be the case," Kelly said.

"When it takes for him, he's going to be on the money. He is a lot of the time anyway, but it's not yet completely clicking for him, and we want to make sure we get him to the point because he's got the potential to do great things in our sport.

"But we also have to be able to pay his wage so we can't go and lock ourselves into any situation running a team where you haven't got that half sort out or completely sorted out before you enter into an agreement.

"So hopefully we can get that knocked over and get him signed up again ... we've got a responsibility to Nissan for four competitive cars on the grid and that's our plan."

Reflecting on his final seasons as a driver, Skaife - who retired as a full-time competitor at the end of 2008 - added that the perception of a driver running a team played a part.

"It's always hard because a lot of that expectation is about your own personal performance, but also there's a lot of outside and external influence, whether it's sponsors, it's the team itself or essentially the way you're perceived," the five-time champion said.

"And the hard part for Todd - which was the same for me at that stage - is to be at that stage when you've tried to own and run a team through that time, it's very hard. Much different to just going and driving the car."

Kelly has won three races at the Hidden Valley circuit and is looking forward to a hit-out at the newly resurfaced track in his Nissan Altima this weekend.

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