Gun FPR Engineer goes NASCAR

Mark Winterbottom's race engineer James Small will fulfill a dream when he departs Ford Performance Racing to take up a position with top NASCAR team Richard Childress Racing for the 2014 season.

While it's great news for Small it means a restucture for FPR and follows on quickly from Campbell Little's move to Dick Johnson Racing as sporting director.

Small, 30, who is widely regarded as one of the most talented engineers in V8 Supercars, oversaw Winterbottom and Steve Richards' nail biting Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000 victory this year in the Pepsi Max Falcon FG II and was also calling the shots from the pit garage for David Reynolds and Dean Canto when they finished a nail-bitingly close second in 2012 in the Bottle-O Ford.

The former racer's V8 Supercars engineering career started at GRM in 2007 and also included stints at Paul Morris Motorsport and Kelly Racing before joining FPR.

Small's true love is banked oval racing, a bug he caught attending the Calder Park Thunderdome as a youngster with his father Les, a renowned engine builder and race car preparer.

"I spent most of my early years at the Thunderdome ... so it's just something I have always wanted to do," he said.

Small visited RCR in Charlotte with his CV after the V8 Supercars Championship round in Austin in May and obviously impressed, as he has been offered a job as a number two race engineer although as yet he does not know which driver and car he will be working with.

But whatever the challenge, he is clearly looking forward to it.

"I just want to go racing," he said. "V8s just don't race enough. I know a lot of people probably say we race too much but just the ability to go and race every week is something that really appeals to me.

"I know it is going to be a lot different and I have a lot to learn."

FPR boss Tim Edwards was philosophical about Small's departure.

“It means we’ll be restructuring and recruiting as you do,” he said. “Whilst it’s disappointing, I’m pleased for James. He’s going to live the dream. He watches every NASCAR race and I suggest he’ll spend the rest of his life over there and we’ll only see James Small again 38 times a year when we get to watch him on the television.

“In some ways winning Bathurst probably didn’t do us any favours, he probably ticked the box and thought 'oh well, now I’ll go and do that’!

“It’s disappointing, because you always like to keep consistency there but I can understand why he’s doing it.

“We’ve got some good options, we’ve got eight other engineers in the group so we’re just working through who we add to bolster the group, at the moment. We’ve been working on that for the last three or four weeks."

One prospect Edwards admitted to was potentially bringing engineer Adam DeBorre from DJR with Chaz Mostert, who will replace Will Davison in 2014. While DeBorre engineers Mostert at the track, his role within FPR is customer support engineer. 

“Yep – that would be a consideration. But as I say in the next week or two we’ll finalise exactly what everyone’s doing.”

While happy to have ticked the Bathurst box, Small is still hoping for the Championship win as well, although the Sargent Security Phillip Island 360 results did Winterbottom no favours, dropping him from 88 to 124 points off the pace of Championship leader Jamie Whincup, while fellow Red Bull Holden Commodore driver Craig Lowndes is 104 points ahead.

“We are still not out of it yet... we will see where we sit on Saturday night (at the Sydney 500),” said Small. “We need those guys to have some issues like we did early in the year. Last weekend we had a lot of pace but things didn't go right.

“We will keep fighting. Nothing would be better than to go out with a couple of wins regardless of where we finish in the Championship.”