Walkinshaw Restructures with Focus on 2014
Walkinshaw Racing is already gearing up for the 2014 season with key personnel changes within the team.
Highly regarded team boss Adrian Burgess makes a controversial switch from team principal at Triple Eight Race Engineering in 2014 after six months on gardening leave, in order to help propel the once dominant factory outlet back to power.
He becomes managing director, replacing Steve Hallam one year ahead of the expiration of his fellow Englishman’s contract with Walkinshaw Racing.
Chief designer Doug Skinner and high profile engineers Matt Crawford and Scott Sinclair leave the team, along with operations manager Adam Laws.
It is understood the departures are a combination of redundancies and resignations.
It is unknown what role Burgess – who is currently on holiday in the UK – played in the movements.
Walkinshaw Racing campaigned two Holden Racing Team Commodore VFs for Garth Tander and James Courtney, and the Supercheap Auto Racing entry for Russell Ingall in 2013.
In 2014, Tim Slade will replace Ingall in the Supercheap entry and Walkinshaw Racing will expand to run a fourth car for Nick Percat, underpinned by the Racing Entitlements Contract (REC) of South Australian motorsport patron James Rosenberg.
Crawford was car manager (or lead engineer) for the Ingall entry, while Sinclair performed the same role for Tander. In his position, Laws has managed the operations of the Walkinshaw Racing manufacturing facility since 2008.
Skinner, an Australian, started at Walkinshaw Racing in 2005 after a long period working in Formula One. He oversaw the design of the company’s Project Blueprint Holden Commodore VE and Commodore VF Car of the Future. He was also a member of the V8 Supercars Technical Advisory Panel.
Highly-rated engineer Mathew ‘Techo’ Nilsson will rejoin Walkinshaw Racing in 2014 after three years at Ford Performance Racing.
Crawford has worked at the organisation since 1993 and was a key player in his its period of dominance between 1996 and 2002 when it won six teams’ Championships in seven years and Mark Skaife won three drivers’ championships.
Sinclair engineered James Courtney to his 2010 driver’s championship at Dick Johnson Racing, when Burgess was in charge there as sporting director. He swapped with Courtney to HRT in 2011 and has since rotated through several different roles, including the management of Car of the Future development. It is believed Sinclair informed the team of his departure before the end of the season.
