Ex-Walkinshaw, BJR Holden pops up on track in England …
STORY: AARON NOONAN, V8 SLEUTH
IMAGES: RACING 38 PHOTOGRAPHY/AN1 IMAGES (JUSTIN DEELEY/INETPICS)
A FORMER Walkinshaw Racing Commodore is the latest V8 Supercar sold off and now living overseas.
The car, last raced in the Dunlop Super2 Series by Brad Jones Racing in 2015, has been purchased by Brit Ric Wood and has hit the track for the first time in its new home half a world away from where it was built.
It’s been spotted out and about on track at Oulton Park in England in recent times in a HRT 2010 look-a-like livery, however it was never actually a Holden Racing Team Commodore.
While it may not have HRT history, the car – chassis WR 008 – does indeed have Walkinshaw Racing heritage given it was originally built by the team in 2008 and debuted with Rick Kelly at the helm as a HSV Dealer Team entry in Darwin in 2008.
It was later run by WR in Bundaberg Red colours for David Reynolds in 2009 and Andrew Thompson in 2010 before moving on to Brad Jones Racing in 2011 to replace the car destroyed in a fireball accident in Perth with Karl Reindler at the helm.
Fabian Coulthard ran the car with Lockwood backing for BJR in 2012 before it reverted to the team’s Dunlop Series program with Chris Pither (2013/14) and Josh Kean (2015).
Wood is a name some Supercars followers may find familiar. He formerly owned an ex-Mark Skaife/Gibson Motorsport Commodore VS in the late 1990s that had raced at Bathurst in 1998 in Wynn’s colours.
After repainting it purple and fitting a bigger engine, the car raced in Formula Saloons in the UK though sadly was later stolen in England and never recovered.
The Walkinshaw-built, ex-BJR car is the latest in an increasing number of ex-V8 Supercars being sold off overseas.
An ex-Ford Performance Racing Falcon was recently sold to former team boss David Richards to add to the Prodrive museum in England, while McLaren F1 boss Zak Brown acquired the 2011 Bathurst-winning HRT Commodore in 2017.
Jamie Whincup’s 2017 championship-winning Red Bull Commodore now lives in Johor while the former Garry Rogers Motorsport Volvo S60s now reside in the Polestar Museum in Sweden.
