Shop
Team Manager of Blanchard Racing Team, Brendan Hogan, will step away from the Supercars paddock.
Hogan, who was appointed the role at BRT last year, had been absent from the Sandown SuperSprint due to what has been revealed as an illness.
It has now been confirmed he will miss the remainder of the Repco Supercars Championship season.
Hogan will move into a new role on the automotive side of the CoolDrive business — owned by the Blanchard family — working on a four-wheel-drive suspension project.
It leaves a gap at the race team, with BRT owner Tim Blanchard and Mathew Nilsson set to split the Team Manager duties for the rest of the 2022 campaign.
The single-car squad has faced a turbulent period of staffing and results lately, with race engineer Mirko De Rosa absent since Darwin due to a back operation.
Hogan engineered the car at Townsville, followed by Nilsson at The Bend, before Wally Storey joined the technical line-up for Sandown.
It is understood Chris Fitzgerald will engineer Tim Slade at Pukekohe.
Blanchard confirmed De Rosa is expected to return for the Repco Bathurst 1000 from October 6-9.
“Mirko has kind of had his health issues but he’s back at work and he’ll be back at Bathurst,” Blanchard told Speedcafe.com.
“It will be great to have him back after a few months away.
“In the short term Mat Nilsson and I will look after the team manager role while we finalise the long term position.”
Adding of Hogan’s departure: “We’re just balancing the need of the wider business and sharing the responsibility to make sure we can keep on top of our day-to-day jobs as well.”
Slade looks set to leave BRT at the end of the current campaign and is tipped to land at PremiAir Racing.
It also leaves the team looking for a new driver.
Lee Holdsworth was the favourite to take over that seat, though has now announced his retirement.
Blanchard says the outfit is currently “working through” driver options.
“We’re not too worried about experience, we just need someone that we’re confident is going to be able to do the job.
“We’ve got a great group of staff and a highly skilled team, we need to make sure we’ve got a person in the car who has got the ability to extract that.
“We’re not looking for a pay driver or anything like that, we’re looking for who is going to be able to get the results that all the hard work of the boys in the team deserve.”
The next round of the Supercars Championship is the ITM Auckland SuperSprint from September 9-11.
