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Ex-Holden Motorsports Executive Blasts Walkinshaw Racing

V8 Supercars is in for quite a shakeup in the coming years. Not only are the V8-powered Holden Commodore and Ford Falcon not long for this world, but Holden itself has officially dropped factory support for the legendary Holden Racing Team.

In a major move, Holden instead will back Triple Eight Race Engineering, cutting ties with HRT-Walkinshaw after 26 years. Following the move, ex-Holden motorsports director John Crennan blasted Walkinshaw boss Ryan Walkinshaw for major missteps leading to the move, reports SpeedCafe.

Crennan guided HRT and Walkinshaw HSV operations for 20 years and said Walkinshaw himself has done the company no good.

“His appointment of Adrian Burgess created an intense enemy in Roland Dane whose experience, influence and guile to my mind was always going to see a monster come back at some point,” Crennan said.

“It worried me at the time and I thought there would be a reset on that at some point.”

He also said Walkinshaw made a mistake in not relocating to Australia from England to oversee the operations.

Crennan did offer some advice for Walkinshaw going forward, which has committed to running a two-car team next year.

“I would be seeking to gain permission from the Brock family to use the Brock name and I would have that seen as a memorial to Peter Brock so that the Brock name could live on with his connection to HDT (Holden Dealer Team) and HRT.”

Former GM Authority staff writer.

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Comments

  1. Using the Brock name? After what his old man did to Brock, Skaife, and countless others? Really? Best bet would be to revive the HSV Dealer Team name used by the Kellys around ten years ago. Makes much more sense.

    Reply
  2. Wasn’t Crennan the guy that didn’t mesh with Lowndes which triggered Craig’s defection to Ford ?
    I always thought that was the beginning of the end for HRT whereas their should have been a logical succession of Brock to Skaife to Lowndes to ?
    I really don’t like the idea of using Brock’s name in this way either.

    Reply

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