GRM works to stay on the pace

A flash in the pan or consistent front-running pace? That’sthe question Garry Rogers Motorsport will be keen to answer as the V8 Supercarschampionship heads for a tough two week swing through the Tasmanian and New Zealandrounds. 

With teenage Kiwi rookie Scott McLaughlin having alreadybroken through for a win in race four at the Australian Grand Prix in hisValvoline VF Commodore and Frenchman Alex Premat showing strong pace, GRM’sconfidence it has broken through from the mid-field pack is growing.

“I can’t see us falling massively away from where we are butwe are going to have to work bloody hard to stay where we are,” said GRM’stechnical chief Richard Hollway, who doubles as McLaughlin’s engineer.

Hollway, who had a long and decorated career with the HoldenRacing Team and the Walkinshaw organisation before swapping to Garry Roger’ssmaller operation, has no doubt the new Car of the Future technical base hasaided GRM’s performance.

In particular, the swap from the live rear axle and wattslink to a control independent rear suspension has been crucial in upping theteam’s pace.

“The rear-end was fairly old and that is now the same aseverybody, so if that was a weakness – which I think it possibly was – then wehave had a little lift there,” Hollway told v8supercars.com.au. 

“In the last couple of years we know we’ve been lackingsomething, lacking a real basis or foundation to work on. Now we know with acouple of guys relatively new to the series that we have good car speed.

“And it seems to be everywhere we go, we are knocking on thetop five, so we have a really good foundation and then we can build from there,whereas in the last couple of years we have been fishing around trying to understandwhere we were lacking.”

However, Hollway conceded that being on the pace didn’tguarantee staying on the pace because of the amount of effort every team wasputting in to develop their new packages, including category powerhouse TripleEight Race Engineering, which has six cars in the championship, including twofactory Red Bull Racing entries for Jamie Whincup and Craig Lowndes.

“There are no illusions here. We are going to have to workbloody hard,” Hollway said. “Triple Eight will be working flat-out up there.The pace of the field at the moment is probably Brad Jones Racing andguaranteed Triple Eight won’t like that. HRT, and all the teams, will beworking very hard to catch BJR. And we are doing the same.”

Having rebuilt Premat’s crashed VF from the AGP meetingwithout significant issues, Hollway said the team was now concentrating ontidying up the details of both team cars following the hectic summer buildschedule.

“We haven’t thrown it together but we have probably jumped afew steps because we have had to work so hard to get the cars built,” Hollwayexplained. “Now we are just going back and tidying up some of that day-to-daystuff that we always do.”

McLaughlin heads into the April 3-5 Tasmania MicrosoftOffice 365 running sixth in the championship, while Premat is 13th. Thefollowing weekend is the Auckland 400 at revamped Pukekohe.

Hollway reaffirmed how impressed he is with 19-year-old McLaughlinand how his attitude reminds him of working with Lowndes in his formative yearsat HRT.

“The thing that really reminds me of Craig is that he reallyseems to enjoy himself, just genuinely likes driving the car.”