Team 18 sign former GRM engineer

Team 18 has recruited multiple championship and Bathurst-winning engineer Richard Hollway as its new Head of Engineering for the 2021 Repco Supercars Championship.

Hollway joins following a ten-year stint as Chief Engineer at Garry Rogers Motorsport (GRM) and will oversee the squad’s engineering group that runs two Holden ZB Commodores for Mark Winterbottom and Scott Pye.

Winterbottom will continue to be engineered by fellow GRM recruit Manuel Sanchez, while Phil Keed, who commenced the 2020 season as the team’s engineering leader, will remain as race engineer for Pye following a successful formation that saw the team’s first podium finish this year at the Darwin Triple Crown.

Hollway joined the Holden Racing Team (HRT) as it commenced their golden era of five-straight championship victories between 1998 and 2002 with Craig Lowndes and Mark Skaife, and four Bathurst 1000 wins. During his time at HRT, Hollway also worked with the likes of Peter Brock, Jim Richards, Garth Tander and Greg Murphy.

“With COVID I’ve basically had a year off from racing, but we went up to Bathurst for the GRM wildcard entry and it was there I realised I still loved the Supercars and thought it would be great to get back into it,” Hollway said.

“I started to have a look around after Bathurst. I actually spoke to Charlie last year and we were close to doing something then and I regretted not doing it, but I spoke to him again and it all came together this time.

“It’s a good model that the team is running as a Triple Eight customer with engineering support and one of the key factors for me was their performance this year, they’ve done an awesome job and really stepped up, so I’m looking forward to bolstering the engineering department and contributing to their efforts next year.

“I’m really excited to apply the knowledge I’ve gathered over the last 25 years or so to this new program, but I’ll also be on a steep learning curve with the progression of the cars and the Gen-3 regulations approaching.

“It’s great to be working again with Manuel [Sanchez], we got on really well and worked well together at GRM.

“I’m also looking forward to working with Phil [Keed], we have never really worked on the same team together but back in the HRT and Team Brock days we worked closely together in developing stuff, he’s a seriously clever guy.

“Having two top line drivers in ‘Frosty’ [Winterbottom] and Scott [Pye], I’m excited to be working with such quality drivers and to help in extracting the most out of their cars when we go racing.”

A move to GRM saw Hollway oversee the development and homologation of the Volvo S60 in 2013 and act as the race engineer for future three-time Supercars champion Scott McLaughlin to finish third in the drivers championship in 2016.

Charlie Schwerkolt - Owner, Team 18 said:

“It’s fantastic to have Richard Hollway come onboard as our head of engineering, it’s a great coup for the team to have an addition with his record in the sport,” said Schwerkolt.

“To build Team 18 I want the best drivers and the best people I can recruit in their role, Richard is a strong addition and a natural fit to our team’s culture.

“Scott [Pye] and Phil [Keed] have built a great relationship and gelled really well, so we don’t want to upset that, but while he is based in Queensland it made sense to get another person on the ground at Mount Waverley to oversee both cars and increase our engineering capacity.

“To finish 2020 as the fifth best team in pit lane in our first year as a two car team is something I’m very proud of, but we have to keep improving and we have built the foundations to do that.

“Supercars is so competitive that unless you keep striving to do better there’s plenty of teams knocking on the door, so bringing Richard onboard is the latest progressive move to take Team 18 to the next level in performance.

“We will continue with our support and technical arrangement with Triple Eight, it is such a valuable partnership and Richard will be a natural conduit to our communication with the factory team.”

Hollway will join the Mount Waverley-based squad in January, before the 2021 Repco Supercars Championship commences at the Mount Panorama 500 on February 24-26.