THE Blanchard Racing Team has completed a mid-season engineering signing, recruiting Sheldon Auhl from PremiAir Racing.
It became apparent in the days after the Townsville 500 that a reshuffle was on the cards, with team owner Tim Blanchard explaining Mirko De Rosa’s shift to a workshop-based role.
At the time, Blanchard flagged that a new addition would be announced in the lead up to Round 7 at Sydney Motorsport Park (July 28-30) and he has now delivered on that.
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Auhl will take the lead as race engineer for Todd Hazelwood’s #3 CoolDrive Mustang on race weekends for the remainder of 2023.
He and Hazelwood have previously worked together at Matt Stone Racing, while Auhl was Chris Pither’s race engineer at PremiAir for a number of rounds last season.
“It’s an awesome opportunity that Tim has given me, to be back alongside Todd after so many years at MSR,” Auhl told V8 Sleuth.
“And to be back race engineering is pretty cool. It’s something that I wanted to do for this year.”
The 29-year-old will remain living in Western Australia, where he runs the Auhls Transport family business, and travel to rounds.
He’s the first to admit a steep learning curve awaits at this weekend’s Beaurepaires Sydney SuperNight.
“Definitely a deep-end experience, never working on a Gen3 Mustang let alone any Mustang for starters,” said Auhl.
“It’s going to be a different ballgame; I have only ever worked on Triple Eight chassis but the concepts are the same between the two cars with so many controlled components.
“I feel like I’m fine and I’m ready and Todd has got his head around it so we’re ready to take on the opportunity.
“They still have a couple of test days up their sleeve before the enduros so we’ll get through SMP and go from there.”
Hazelwood is 20th in the standings with a best result of fourth place in Race 1 of the Perth SuperSprint.
