TICKFORD Racing will return to the Dunlop Super2 Series this year with an FG X Falcon driven by 20-year-old Zak Best, but it’s not the same car he raced last year.
The team today confirmed he will return to compete for the team in the development category and also take one of the co-driver seats in one of its four Mustangs (driver pairings remain to be confirmed) in October’s Repco Bathurst 1000.
Best’s 2021 Super2 mount – the 2015 Mark Winterbottom-championship winning chassis – has been retired by the Melbourne-based team and is on the market to be sold to a collector and prompted the team to acquire another car for Best to drive.
The Benalla racer will step into a Dick Johnson Racing-built Falcon that has been most recently housed at Matt Chahda’s family team’s workshop in Albury and last raced in the hands of Matt McLean at Bathurst in 2020.
The chassis began its life with DJR in 2014 and was driven by David Wall for much of that season.
Upgraded from FG to FG X specification, it became one of two chassis that DJR Team Penske used in rotation in 2015 and was notable raced by Marcos Ambrose in Shell Helix colours upon his return to the Supercars Championship in Adelaide.
He stepped down after the non-championship Albert Park event and Scott Pye rotated between the chassis for the following rounds.
The chassis Best will drive this year was driven by Pye and Ambrose in XBOX colours at the 2015 Gold Coast 600, Ambrose’s final V8 Supercar start.
Pye ran it for the first part of 2016 before debuting a new car and this car was then acquired by Matt Stone Racing for Todd Hazelwood to drive in the ‘main game’ and then used on occasion in Super2.
It’s the first time since the team’s debut as Ford Performance Racing in 2003 – when it ran two of the former Glenn Seton Racing AU Falcons prior to the completion of a full complement of BA Falcons – that the squad hasn’t raced a car it hasn’t originally built.
Best’s car will be very much ‘Tickfordised’ for Super2 though with the team’s engine and running gear fitted to the ex-DJR chassis.
