TIM Blanchard says the mission to expand his Supercars team should not be underestimated.
The Blanchard Racing Team is getting an early taste of life as a two-car main game outfit at the 2023 enduros, fielding a wildcard for Aaron Love/Jake Kostecki at the Sandown 500 and Repco Bathurst 1000 in addition to its regular #3 CoolDrive Mustang.
They’re also continuing to run Love’s Super2 Mustang, making for three cars in total.
Blanchard described it as “a huge effort” just to get to Sandown, where Hazelwood making the Top 10 Shootout was the highlight. Hazelwood/Blanchard finished 17th and Love/Kostecki 24th.
“To have two straight cars and reliable cars was full credit to everything that has gone on behind the scenes from the team,” he told V8 Sleuth.
“When you take on that sort of workload, sometimes the preparation isn’t what you want.
“Obviously we had some speed in qualifying but we just struggled with the tyre life in the race.
“There was probably another few factors that were contributing to that but there’s a few things as a team we can probably do a bit better.”
BRT hopes a thorough debrief will make for a smoother experience next week at Bathurst.
As for running two full-time cars in 2024?
“There’s still a few things to do but we’re really confident in the position we’re in for next year,” said Blanchard, whose Sandown wildcard crew included Kurt Kostecki.
“It feels like it’s only a few weeks away but it is September; we have still got four or five months until we start testing next year, so we’re getting staff and all the resources sorted.
“This wildcard program just gets us on the front foot in terms of that preparation because it’s a much bigger step than I think it looks like from the outside where you just add an extra car and a few more people and off you go.
“But when it’s only one car, you can use people to do two or three functions in the team.
“When it becomes two cars, they don’t have the time to do that, so it’s more than doubling the size of the team to go to two cars.
“It’s a huge task but that’s what we’re working on at the moment.”
BRT has previously shown plenty of pace at the Mountain, with Tim Slade qualifying second at the 2021 Mount Panorama 500 and fourth at that year’s Bathurst 1000.
