Triple Eight tips Penske to get new Supercars manufacturer
Triple Eight boss Roland Dane has tipped rival team owner Roger Penske as the man most likely to bring a new manufacturer to Australian Supercars
The series lost Volvo at the end of the 2016 season, while Ford no longer provides any direct funding to teams like Tickford and DJR Team Penske and Nissan is entering the final year of its current deal with Kelly Racing.
Holden is the most committed and is in the middle of a shift with its motorsport programme thanks to the imminent introduction of the ZB Commodore and an expected rollout of the V6 engine for the 2019 season.
Triple Eight is fully entrenched in Holden's programme through the development of the ZB aero and engine, as well as running the factory Holden squad, but Dane hopes Penske can attract a new make.
Penske runs Fords in NASCAR and Supercars, Chevrolet-powered cars in IndyCar, and Acura's IMSA SportsCar prototype programme.
"I reckon that the person who is best equipped in the racing world - anywhere in the world - to bring in somebody is Roger Penske," Dane said.
"I hope, both from a Triple Eight point of view and from a Supercars overall and Australian motorsport point of view, that Roger manages to bring in somebody else.
"He's the best bet, and I'd love to see that happen.
"Who with I'm not sure, but we all know who the big targets in the automotive world are and the volume sellers.
"It would just be great to have one of them. And that would give the impetus to have another one."
Dane said any new manufacturer partnership "might not be the same as we've always had".
"We can see that things have moved on from the old days where Holden would pay for every single thing," he added.
"We've got a great structure with them, but there's an onus on us as well to develop the ZB along with their input, but taking an awful lot of the load.
"It's like the government having a public-private partnership.
"So maybe Roger can do a deal with somebody on a slightly different level to what's been done before, but to create an opportunity for another manufacturer to come in without it being too onerous an overall bill."
Dane reckons the series does not need a huge influx of competing manufacturers, citing problems faced by the previous forms of the British Touring Car Championship and World Rally Championship as examples of how that can be a negative.
He said: "If you have too many then one of them wakes up one morning and says 'hang on, we haven't won a race for three years, we're not doing anything!'
"That's what happened in BTCC, it's what happened in world rallying, there were too many.
"What you need is three or four who are committed to it but all get a bite of the cherry."
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