Nash: Why time was right to join Board
Twenty years into his time as a team owner and boasting a bigger investment in the sport than ever before, Rod Nash says the time was right to join the Supercars Board.
The Prodrive co-owner was voted onto the Supercars Board in October, assuming the team representative role vacated by Roland Dane.
He will work alongside fellow team rep Brad Jones, Archer Capital’s Peter Wiggs and Supercars’ CEO, currently James Warburton with his replacement Sean Seamer starting in 2018, to steer the business.
Nash has been involved in Supercars since the late 1990s, starting out driving his own ex-Wayne Gardner Holden before running his team under various guises.
That has included competing as a standalone privateer, parking his Racing Entitlements Contract at other teams and, most recently, co-owning the four-car Prodrive Racing Australia outfit.
Nash teamed with sand mining magnate Rusty French to buy the formerly Ford Performance Racing-branded outfit from David Richards’s Prodrive UK in 2012.
French and Nash currently hold 39 percent of the team each, with lawyer Sven Burchartz making up the balance.
Time spent on racing is split with Nash’s concurrent interests in the powerline industry, having run line-clearing firms contracting to governments for the last three decades.
Although vastly different industries, Nash says that the core principals of business are universal, and he’s keen to apply all his experience to the Supercars role.
Nash competing in his first Supercars season in 1998
“I’ve been in business for over 30 years and for 20 of those I’ve been involved in Supercars, so I certainly feel I have something to contribute,” Nash told Supercars.com.
“The RNR REC [the #55 is solely owned by Nash and entered as Rod Nash Racing] has been maintained in all different configurations over the years.
"I’ve dealt with a lot of teams, and then when the opportunity came to purchase Prodrive that was a nice step up as well.
“I lead the business modelling [at Prodrive], so I’d like to think that with all that experience I bring something to the table at the Board.
“If you look at the contributors to the Board over the time I’ve been involved, everyone has sort of had a bit of a crack at it but for one reason or another I’ve managed to stay out of it.
“It’s a good time for me to step in. I’m very interested in where the sport’s heading. I’m looking forward to contributing with whatever the next work is.”
When asked of his main priorities in the role, Nash stressed the importance of reducing costs to ensure sustainability for teams.
He noted the efforts of Archer and Warburton over recent years have been vital for the teams, but says it’s an area that needs continued work.
The #55 remains entered under the Rod Nash Racing banner
“I’ve always felt very strongly about sustainability and it’s an issue that’s knocked on the door of this sport, like it does any business,” he said.
“There has been a lot of cost reduction achieved but we’ve got to continue to work on that because it’s just straight business, trying to turn a profit.
“We might be a sport, but these businesses [teams] are high-end businesses that turnover multiple millions of dollars and for that effort, the businesses are entitled to create an EBIT [Earnings Before Interest and Taxes] among themselves. We need to build on that.
“The Commission is a great entity that works hard on all that [cost reduction] as well. But like any Board, it can give good direction to entities it might have, like the Commission.”
