Little Hopeful of Bolstering DJR
Esteemed engineer Campbell Little this weekend has begun a new role in V8 Supercars – sporting director at Dick Johnson Racing. And the plan is, in Little’s words, to get the team “back to being up there with the best of them”.
“Effectively they’ve thrown me the tool kit, all the toys and said you figure it out,” Little said of the new role with the small team.
The list of teams and drivers Little has worked with is basically a who’s who of V8 Supercars, with five Bathurst 1000 wins to his name and two driver’s Championships.
After Stone Brothers Racing in its dominance, Little was with Triple Eight in the early days – before Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup – and played a part in building the team from an up-and-comer to the powerhouse it is today.
Most recently he has been at Ford Performance Racing, having engineered Mark Winterbottom (at Frosty’s request) and this year Alex Davison in Charlie Schwerkolt’s JELD-WEN entry.
Queensland-based Little already worked from DJR's workshop on weekdays, as the team has a technical alliance with FPR.
FPR has released Little from his contract to begin the new role – in fact, FPR team principal Tim Edwards sees it as an opportunity for the two Ford teams to improve their relationship.
“Campbell’s appointment at DJR is the ideal way for both teams to work even closer and get a head start on ensuring all Fords on the 2014 V8 Supercars grid are as competitive as possible,” Edwards said.
While Little already has an idea of how the team operates at the workshop, being in the DJR garage on race weekends is an important part of the move.
“It was difficult to look at how they operate at a race track when I was operating a car there (at FPR). I didn’t want to let Alex or Charlie down.
“They were good enough to release me (to) figure out what I can do here – I’ve seen how the workshop operates in the week, now how the race team operates.”
FPR recently called up young contracted driver Chaz Mostert – who currently races with DJR – for 2014, leaving a question mark over the future driver line-up.
Is the recruitment of Little a sign the team has a strong future ahead?
“Again, I’m hoping,” he said.
“Obviously everything is dependent on the money and the drivers you can get. We’ve targeted both of those things... To make a team you have to have a good driver – you can’t get a good driver unless you’ve got the rest of the crew on the car, so we’ve got to get one of those things first.
“So they’ve brought me in as the corner of the jigsaw puzzle to build that up.
“If we can make the cars strong, we can attract a driver, or a sponsor, and that will all work. That’s the bigger picture… nothing’s going to happen overnight.
“I think a lot of people have a short memory – when I started with Triple Eight in 2004 we had a pay driver and we had a couple of years of hurt where cars broke and all sorts of other bits and pieces, and we did exactly the same thing.
“And it’s not just me, it’s everybody else growing into their roles and hopefully we can do a similar thing here… There are some parts I’m looking forward to a lot.”
Team boss Dick Johnson said Little was without doubt the main for the job, and was confident DJR could become one of the greats again.
“Obviously our team has been lacking a little bit in experienced people in the past year or two and convincing Campbell – it’s taken a long time to convince him – but he’s up for it and as far as I’m concerned, as far as experience goes, he’s the most experienced in pit lane,” Johnson said.
“He’s been around a long time, so he’s obviously the best choice for us and certainly for the team, to start to get more results. We’re now starting to find our feet – it’s been a really tough year right up until now but we’re starting to go in the right direction.
“We will be up the front again at some stage of the game. It probably won’t be tomorrow, we’re heading in the right direction and what we’ve got plans will see us at the pointy end.”
Long-time FPR race engineer David Patterson is running the #18 JELD-WEN FPR Ford in place of Little for the final two events of the season at Phillip Island and Homebush. Davison topped yesterday’s practice times.
The V8 Supercars action continues on-track at the Sargetn Security Phillip Island 360 today with qualifying at 12.55pm local time, to determine the grid for the final 60/60 Super Sprint race for the year.
Click here for final practice results.
