IN-FORM Dale Wood has welcomed BlueScope Steel subsidiary Ranbuild aboard for the remainder of his 2023 Porsche Carrera Cup Australia title campaign.
Wood enters Round 3 in Townsville this weekend sitting second in the championship, following his cleansweep of Hidden Valley last month.
He has moved to a distinctively fresh look, celebrating a deal with Ranbuild for 2023 and beyond.
“I’m proud and honoured to get a chance to represent a company like Ranbuild,” Wood told V8 Sleuth.
“They’re a 70-year-old company that has been huge in the shed and steel industry. I love that the car is obviously different to everything else on track and it represents Ranbuild.”
Ranbuild general manager Chris Currie expressed his excitement at the company’s “first major sponsorship in Australian motor racing.”
Wood, who won the 2013 Super2 title and was Carrera Cup runner-up in 2019, will also retain branding from Shannons which had backed his Darwin success.
The challenge for the Brad Jones Racing co-driver is to now avoid a repeat of the Townsville trouble he experienced last year.
Wood also won the 2022 Darwin round before a Race 1 DNF ruined his Townsville race weekend.
“We came off an awesome Darwin last year and Townsville was shaping up to be good, we qualified well but just caught up in a Turn 1 incident and the problem with Carrera Cup is it’s a progressive grid so if you hurt yourself in Race 1 you have got a really long weekend ahead of you,” he said.
“What I would say is different from last year is we’re quite a different direction with the car.
“The time I have had with EBM (Earl Bamber Motorsport), it’s awesome, I can’t say enough about the team in the way that they operate and the relationship I have got with Ben Jenkins there who is the team manager; he engineers my car and is on the radio.
“A year down, you have got such a better rapport with everybody and we have got a really good thing going on so I think there’s a lot different to where I was sitting this time last year.”
Jackson Walls holds a five-point lead atop the standings, with Wood’s EBM teammate Callum Hedge a close third.
MORE: Why Wood’s best Bathurst 1000 was his worst
