Prodrive boss Edwards to miss Townsville
Prodrive will be without long-time team principal Tim Edwards for its milestone 200th Virgin Australia Supercars Championship event in Townsville.
Rather than making the trek to North Queensland, Edwards will be in Hattah, Victoria, where his two teenaged sons will be competing in the Hattah Desert Race.
Edwards only recalls missing one previous Supercars event since starting with Prodrive in 2005 – forced out of a trip to New Zealand nearly a decade ago due to a burst appendix.
With team co-owner Rod Nash at hand to oversee the Supercars effort in Townsville, Edwards says family has taken priority for what has become an annual tradition.
Sons Harrison (16) and Benjamin (13) both regularly compete in motocross and are among over 750 entries for Hattah, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.
“They regularly race when I’m not there, but Hattah is something a bit special,” Edwards told Supercars.com.
“Harrison has done it the last two years, but normally it’s the week before Townsville and unfortunately this year it’s clashed and my boys take priority.
“It’s a huge event. We’re out there from Tuesday next week, out in the desert setting the bikes up and getting dialled in.
“It’ll be different (to be absent from a Supercars event), but they’ll probably go and win and everyone will be saying they’re better off without me. If so, great, I’ll have weekends off!
“I’m fortunate though that I’ve got a great chief engineer and team manager that run the ship really. They’ll be fine without me.”
Edwards joined Prodrive for its third Supercars season in 2005 following a brief stint working on Melbourne’s 2006 Commonwealth Games event.
Edwards has ridden the highs and lows with Prodrive
Overseeing major changes at the Melbourne-based squad, including a change of ownership in late 2012, Edwards says the 200 event milestone is a special one.
“It’s hard to believe that it is 200 events,” he said.
“I’ve been there for most of them which is ironic given that I came back from Europe to get out of motorsport (following 14 years with the Jordan Formula 1 team)!
“But it’s great that the team has achieved it and there are a few people who have been here for every one of them, going back to the Glenn Seton Racing days.
“The business has changed quite a lot even since I joined when it was a two-car team with no customers. Looking at the size of it now, it’s a big business.”
The team heads to Townsville off the back of a tough weekend at Hidden Valley that saw star drivers Mark Winterbottom and Chaz Mostert just 14th and 17th in the Sunday race respectively.
While the team is facing a tough task to keep pace with the development of Shell V-Power Racing and Triple Eight, Edwards says it knows where it struggled in Darwin.
“We’ve got a fair idea what we were lacking and we plan to address that before we roll out in Townsville,” he said.
“It’s never one thing, there’s no silver bullet, it’s a multitude of a thousand little things that make you have a good or a bad weekend.
“When you look at it we were still pretty strong on Saturday, we just took a step backwards on Sunday.
“There’s been a lot of focus on it (in the media), but we still have belief in ourselves. I think normal service should resume in Townsville.”
Winterbottom finished 14th in Race 12
