Engineering musical chairs between the sole Supercars Ford teams will see Adam de Borre shift back to Prodrive Racing Australia.
After spending a second spell with DJR Team Penske, de Borre will return to head up the engineering for Chaz Mostert.
The pair formed a successful association when Mostert recorded wins at Barbagallo and the remarkable last-to-first victory in the 2014 Bathurst 1000.
A year before de Borre had joined forces with Mostert from the Perth round at DJR.
The pair then enjoyed a run of five wins in the 2015 season before de Borre shifted to DJR Team Penske to engineer Scott Pye.
Scott McLaughlin moves into the #17 Ford as Pye’s replacement which opens up the option of former longtime Triple Eight technical whiz Ludo Lacroix stepping into the role.
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“It’s really exciting to be teaming up with Adam again,” Mostert said.
“He has been my engineer for most of my big career moments so to continue this journey with him is awesome.
“Having worked with Adam for so many years, it’ll be easy to pick up where we left off.
“I really want to win races this year, that’s my goal, and I hope that we can be quick from the get go.”
Mostert’s 2016 engineer Brad Wischusen moves across to the Monster Energy Racing machine of Cameron Waters.
“He (Wischusen) did some great things with Chaz last year and with Dave (Reynolds) before that so I’m confident that together we can get on the winners list this year,” Waters said.
“It’s time to knuckle down and have a good crack at it. I’ve completed my rookie year now, I’ve been to all of the tracks, some multiple times and I think we have a good opportunity to put the Monster Energy Ford on the podium.”
With the departure of long-term engineer Jason Gray at the end of the 2016 season, Brendan Hogan has been confirmed for the #5 Falcon FG X of 2015 Supercars Champion Mark Winterbottom.
With over 10 years’ experience in Supercars and a host of strong results achieved with previous drivers, Winterbottom is confident that Hogan can help him return to the top of the leader board.
“I have a lot of respect for Brendan,” said Winterbottom.
“He’s worked with a lot of good drivers and certainly knows what he’s doing when it comes to these cars and the category as a whole.
“I definitely think he can help us get back up there and back to a bit of consistency because that’s one thing that wasn’t as strong last year.”
After completing five seasons as a data engineer for the team and last year being Dunlop Series race engineer for Jack Le Brocq, Sam Potter steps up to work with team newcomer and series veteran, Jason Bright.
Potter will work closely with the team’s chief engineer, Nathaniel Osborne, in the early stages of his maiden season to further aid Bright as he acclimatises to the FG X setup.
Team Principal Tim Edwards believes the restructure will benefit everyone in 2017.
“We had some big changes to make at the end of last year but it gave us an opportunity put our best foot forward for this year,” Edwards said.
“We chose to put Jason (Bright) with Sam this year because we all know that he, as a driver, is one of the best engineering minds in the field so in Sam’s first year they’ll be able to bounce off each other and try different ideas.”
With a Dunlop Series engineering role now vacant, engineer Sam Scaffidi steps in to work with new signing Josh Kean, while engineer David Paterson and Garry Jacobson continue their title-winning partnership from last season.
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