THE Blanchard Racing Team has found its new team manager to lead the expanding outfit into the 2024 Repco Supercars Championship.
BRT has recruited Kate Harrington from Tickford Racing, with the 28-year-old to become the first female full-time team manager in the main game.
Other women in prominent team roles include co-owners Betty Klimenko (Erebus) and Jess Dane (Triple Eight), Erebus managing director Shannen Kiely and PremiAir race engineer Romy Mayer.
Harrington has been team manager for Tickford’s Super2 program and will start at BRT before Christmas.
“I know that I have got a big challenge ahead of me obviously and if you look at the rest of pitlane, I’m quite young,” she told V8 Sleuth.
“I’m looking forward to it, I hope I can bring to Supercars and pitlane a bit of freshness and youth, some different perspective and hopefully inspire some other young females out there to keep pushing and you can end up here.”
BRT has been without a team manager since Brendan Hogan’s departure in August 2022. Hogan popped up in the paddock this year engineering Anderson Motorsport’s Zak Best in Super2.
For Harrington and BRT, it’s a union that has long been a possibility.
“They approached me a while ago, last year for the first time, but I believed in the thing with Tickford and growing Tickford Autosport,” Harrington explained, referring to the team’s new youth development program.
“When they approached me halfway through this year, they had a completely different vision and plan for the future of where they wanted to take the Blanchard Racing Team and I really liked it and believed that we could make something great there.
“I like the way things are heading there, it’s a really young team and I think there’s a lot of potential there for them.
“They were probably just missing a few key personnel throughout the business but the two-car thing was definitely massive for me – I probably wouldn’t have gone if it was just a one-car team.
“Two cars was probably the deal-breaker there and when it was announced they were going to two cars, Tim (Blanchard) reached out again to speak to me about it and it was something I was really interested in.
“They explained where they wanted the business to be in the next three to five years and how they want to get there and it’s a vision that I believe in and I hope that I can contribute to it.”
The Box Hill squad will field two regular Supercars Championship entries next year driven by James Courtney and Aaron Love and it has already begun bolstering its personnel, with former Thomas Randle engineer Raymond Lau appearing in BRT colours in Adelaide.
Whether or not the Blanchards contest Super2 again, having done so in 2023 with Love, remains to be seen.
