Ian Harrison on establishing Triple Eight Race Engineering in Australia

Thursday, 08 September 2011 15:18

Triple Eight Race Engineering has not only enjoyed significant success in the British Touring Car Championship (BTCC) but also in Australia in the International V8 Supercars Championship.

Triple Eight began racing in the Australian Series in 2004 as owners Ian Harrison, Roland Dane, Peter Butterly and Derek Warwick sought to build on their success in the BTCC. In its short Australian history Triple Eight Race Engineering (or TeamVodafone as it is better known as today):

- Was runner up in the Driver’s Championship in their second and third full-time season (2006 and 2007) in the series;
- Won the prestigious Bathurst 1000 in 2006, 2007 and 2008;
- Won both the Driver’s and Team’s Championships in 2008;
- Won the Driver’s Championship again in 2009;
- Won the Bathurst 1000, Team’s Championship and was runner up in the Driver’s Championship 2010; and
- Currently lead the 2011 Team’s Championship and have the two leading drivers in the Driver’s Championship.

In the second in my series of columns based on my interview with the Chairman of Triple Eight Race Engineering in the UK, Ian Harrison talks to Girlracer about the establishment and success of Triple Eight in Australia.

Tell us about the establishment of the Australian V8 Supercars Team.
It started in ’02. I’d had a contact through a mutual friend with the CEO of Mitsubishi in Adelaide. V8 Supercars was really starting too... you could see this thing was going somewhere. It was only into year five really since the takeover and we went out to Adelaide to the Clipsal in ’02 and met with CEO of Mitsubishi and so we were looking to do something with them, set something up. It was pretty obvious to us that at that time they were definitely the poor cousin of Aussie car manufacturers apart from their big 4x4s...

So we then started looking at doing some aero work for various teams and one of them was Briggs Motorsport as was then. We started chatting with them about doing a wind tunnel program, a model program over here [in the UK]. It’s quite funny because four years later we ended up doing the one for Ford Australia actually, using the models that we use here.

So anyway, it went on and on.... we went to Clipsal in ’03 and I was talking to Briggs again. Then Roland [Dane] heard about what was going on and phoned me up and said ‘Look, what are you up to?’ and it sort of just went from there really. You could see that the [V8 Supercar] Championship was going places because it was commercially setup in a way that makes it attractive. You know it’s setup like F1 in a way. There’s really only three series in the world worth talking about on a commercial basis and I suppose it’s F1, Nascar and V8 Supercars. The rest of it is just the old traditional ... very poorly setup commercially. So yeah that’s how we got into it.

Then of course the easiest thing to do would be to go in and buy a team rather than a franchise. The only ones that were available were Ford franchises which was a bit of a shame. That caused us a little bit of discussion with General Motors obviously because the guy that was the Chairman of Vauxhall at the time, Kevin Wale, used to be the Marketing Director at Holden in Australia. Anyway so I phoned him up and told him what was going on and he said ‘ok, fine’ because we tried to do a deal with Holden, HRT [Holden Racing Team]. I think the last thing they wanted was the jewel in the crown as far as they saw it going to a bunch of poms. So the only option we had was with Ford. Kevin Wale was great and said ‘well if they’re stupid enough not to go with you blokes then they deserve everything they get’ so we went with the Ford deal and the rest is history I suppose.

Were you surprised by how soon you started getting results in Australia?
I think you’d have to say that the first year and a half was pretty traumatic. We had lots of failures on the car and what not but you can’t just jump into something like that and expect to be quick immediately. We had I think an infrastructure and a load of people which knew what they were doing they just had to apply their skills to that particular activity you know. If we’d have gone and done DTM or we’d if gone and done LMP1 it doesn’t matter really you’ve got to make some mistakes. Inherently these guys that are clever and bright they bring new ideas and some of them don’t work because they tried that fifteen years ago. Dick Johnson tried it and it didn’t work, but you’ve almost got to go through that process of making mistakes.

But then you could see... Roland, he knows more about motor racing than most people at the end of the day and certainly about running a business in motor racing, he really understands it. You know he’s very good at his job and he just put all the right ingredients together at the end of the day. He got the right drivers and we had the right engineers you know we got the right budgets and bang, bang, bang it all went in together and off it went.

The way the thing is structured is similar to here [in the UK] and the way we do it here. Obviously he [Roland] was involved in this and I wouldn’t say it’s a mirror image thing but it is pretty close and some of the guys that are on the engineering side of it like Ludo [Lacroix] he used to work here. He was technical director here and he fancied the sun a bit more or something I think. And John Russell’s there I worked with him at Williams F1 and he worked for me as Technical Director at Williams Touring Cars. So you’ve got all the right people making the decisions really.

Is there any shared learning between Triple Eight’s Australian and UK operations?
No it’s completely different. We can learn more from Aussie V8s than the other way round in the commercial terms. We should be really looking at it and saying why aren’t we doing this? That’s what we should be doing.

British Touring Cars, the market over here is completely different. You know you can’t run a V8 Series in the UK nobody buys them. You can’t afford to run them if you do buy them. It’s just not relevant. Having a 2.0L turbo thing is absolutely looked down on in Australia for obvious reasons but it works here. We get as big crowds as you [Australia] do. Aside from the big events like Clipsal and Surfers... we’re getting 35,000 a weekend now.

We live in the shadow here of Formula 1. Formula 1 is what it’s at here and everything else is below that. Whereas for you blokes [in Australia] ... F1 is just not as big, whereas here is where it’s at there is nothing else. Well there is something else but you get down to the BTCC level and you’ve got to make a choice. What do you want to do on your weekend? Do you want to go and watch Manchester United play? Do you want to go to the Rugby? Do you want to go to the Cricket? Do you want to go to this, do you want to go to that or do you want to go to BTCC? You’ve got lots of choice. When’s there’s a F1 race on it’s a no-brainer everyone goes to the Formula 1. You don’t have that in Australia; V8s is the Formula 1 of Australia. By Chelsea Woods

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