LEGENDARY engineer Wally Storey is set to come out of retirement this week for a special assignment at the Repco Bathurst 1000.
Storey will engineer TCR Australia title contender Luke King, whose regular engineer, Chris Stuckey, will be busy with his role on Angelo Mouzouris’ Triple Eight Super2 entry.
King heads to Bathurst second in the TCR standings to Melbourne Performance Centre Audi teammate Chaz Mostert and looks forward to tapping into Storey’s experience.
Storey is perhaps best known for his work at the Holden Racing Team during the early 1990s, which included the squad’s famous 1990 Tooheys 1000 victory.
He later worked for the likes of Wayne Gardner Racing, Tasman Motorsport and Brad Jones Racing, before stepping back from active duty in recent years.
“With the combined event I’ve lost my engineer Chris Stuckey, who can’t do double duty,” explained King.
“It was actually my mentor Jason Bright (who worked with Storey at BJR), who reached out to Wally first.
“I rang him up on the way back from Phillip Island a couple of weeks ago and we were trying to think of engineers we could pull out of the woodwork, who was an experienced hand.
“Brighty messaged me later that night and asked me ‘what about Wally?’
“I pepped up straight away because my dad knows Wally from back in the day and so I got in touch with him.
“Wally said he’d come out of retirement because he knows dad and I are racers, so he’s all onboard.
“His words to me were ‘he’s not coming out to look like an idiot!’”
King is currently 106 points behind Mostert in the standings, with the Supercars regular set to contest just the opening race on Wednesday in a bid to wrap up the title before concentrating on his Great Race efforts.
TCR Australia action begins on Tuesday with Practice 1 at 10:40am AEDT.
