THE Blanchard Racing Team has settled on its inaugural Super2 Series driver, signing Porsche young gun Aaron Love for 2023.
Love was the dominant driver this year in Porsche Carrera Cup Australia, winning 11 races and only falling 11 points short of the title despite missing the Winton and Darwin rounds.
That was as he explored the European scene, contesting Porsche Supercup events at Silverstone and Paul Ricard.
He has ultimately opted to pursue the Repco Supercars Championship route, securing himself a Gen2 CoolDrive Mustang seat for next season’s second-tier competition.
BLANCHARD: We can help Hazelwood excel
That has the potential to lead to further opportunities, such as a Repco Bathurst 1000 co-drive alongside Todd Hazelwood next year and even a full-time promotion when BRT looks to expand its main game program in 2024.
“I guess it hasn’t been any secret that we want to expand the team and move to two cars as soon as possible and we want to make sure we have got some quality drivers to drive them as well,” Blanchard told the Castrol Motorsport News podcast.
“We have got to get through one year at a time but we would very much like Aaron to be part of that and part of our long-term future.”
Love, the younger brother of 2019 Carrera Cup Australia champion Jordan, spoke with excitement ahead of a track outing tomorrow at Winton Motor Raceway.
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“There’s no doubt it’s going to be tough obviously with it being a completely different car to what I have ever driven before, so definitely going to focus on learning how to control the car and do it properly in the right ways and not rush the thing,” he said.
“Obviously our intentions are to settle in and do it all properly and learn the car along the right lines, so doing that, but also you can’t really be a proper motorsport team and driver if you’re not wanting to be competitive.
“So our intentions are always going to be putting our best foot forward and trying to get good results from the very start.
“We’ll just have to play it as it comes and put our best foot forward into preparing for the season and see what happens.”
The Porsche/Supercars pathway has proven fruitful of late, 2021 Carrera Cup winner Cameron Hill becoming a Super2 frontrunner this year and progressing to the main game next season with Matt Stone Racing.
BRT won’t be the only team at Winton tomorrow, as Walkinshaw Andretti United puts five rising stars through an evaluation day.
For the full interviews with Blanchard and Love, tune in to this week’s Castrol Motorsport News episode (accessible above).
