WAU’s breath of fresh air

He’s been the under-the-radar breath of fresh air raved about by several key members out of the Walkinshaw Andretti United camp.

Now Bryce Fullwood is ready to tackle his next challenge – one that he couldn’t have foreseen even a month ago: the BP Supercars All Stars Eseries.

Fullwood was picked up by WAU after convincingly winning the 2019 Dunlop Super2 Series, forming an all-new driver line-up alongside Chaz Mostert.

The 21-year-old came into the main game under no illusions of the giant step between the two tiers and so it has proven, with a tricky start to his rookie season at Adelaide and the Thursday of Albert Park.

Fullwood limped home in both Adelaide races after damaging incidents but felt he’d made progress in his second event before the Beaurepaires Melbourne 400 came to an early end.

Regardless, the impact of his presence has been held in high regard through his first few months at the Clayton organisation.

“He’s one of these kids who you can see that he’s got talent and he’ll get there one day,” WAU team manager Anthony McDonald told Supercars.com.

“He’ll be up there, he’ll be one of those names that everyone will be saying.

“He’s one of those guys where if he does something wrong, he apologises. Normally drivers don’t do that…  

“He’s like a sponge as well, like he’ll come up to the guys and just start talking to them about stuff on the car and what are you doing this for? What’s that?

“All that little stuff that probably as a big professional team, we haven’t seen it for a while. It’s really good having a young fella like that around.”

For Fullwood’s part, he “could be any happier”.

While now is an uncertain time as Supercars awaits the opportunity to return to the physical race track, the Northern Territory native has been buoyed by the hunger on display by his team in the early stages of 2020.

“We want everyone at WAU to want to get out of bed and to want to come to work and to want to strive to be better than everybody else,” he told Supercars.com.

“I think in the past they might have struggled for that a little bit, and so everyone is really excited.

“There’s been a lot of processes shaken up and whatnot this year and whilst there’s a lot of similar people in there, they’ve really embraced the change… the team is very driven to succeed.”

Having relocated WAU’s upgraded Motum simulator to the garage of his house, Fullwood is striving to be best prepared for the Eseries starting April 8.

“I’m one of the people who’s not too big on the sim,” he conceded.

“For me personally, I always worked full-time while I was racing Super2 and lived alone since I was 16 so I haven’t really had time to be honest, but obviously all that is going to change now.

“I mean it is pretty cool that we can even do the Eseries.

“It’s going to be funny but I think you’ll find also that everyone is still a racer at heart and while there is not much to do, I think everyone will have a fair dip at it.”