Eggleston Motorsport has confirmed the purchase of Jamie Whincup’s current Red Bull Holden as it continues to evaluate a Bathurst 1000 wildcard.
The chassis, dubbed 040 and run by Whincup since Sandown last year, will be available to the Dunlop Series team after next month’s Sydney Motorsport Park Super Sprint.
Triple Eight has stuck to its commitment to roll out a new car for Whincup at Sandown this season, despite needing to rush the build of a fresh chassis for Team 18 which will come online at SMP.
Chassis 040 marks the first Car of the Future specification Holden to join Eggleston’s fleet, which includes four previous-generation Triple Eight Holdens.
When Eggleston will first field the car, however, remains to be seen as talks continue with potential drivers and sponsors over a wildcard for October’s Supercheap Auto Bathurst 1000.
Eggleston co-owner Rachael Wagg says that the team will make a call on The Great Race within the next two to three weeks.
Although chasing drivers with funding, Wagg stresses that her team won’t field an entry that is incapable of being competitive.
“We’ll only do it if we can do it 100 percent properly,” Wagg told Speedcafe.com.
“We can’t expect to go there and win but we’d certainly want to be competitive.
“If we are going to do it is has to be done in the right way.”
Wagg admits that running Taz Douglas, who currently sits sixth in the Dunlop Series for the team, would be an ideal scenario.
Douglas finished second at Bathurst just two years ago but is without a Pirtek Enduro Cup ride this season.
“Taz has been talking to us for a while about it, but there’s a few other people in the frame as well,” she said.
Regardless of the Bathurst plans, Wagg says the team does not intend to run its new car in the Dunlop Series this year.
A front-runner in the class over recent seasons, Eggleston has at times struggled for competitiveness against the COTF chassis introduced this year.
Just 19 Dunlop Series entries fronted for the last round in Townsville, where Eggleston was without its third driver Liam McAdam, who is expected to return for Sandown.
“We made the decision to run our current cars this year based on the information from V8 Supercars that a good driver in a good car run by a good team should be able to win regardless of whether it’s a Blueprint car or a Next Gen (COTF) car,” explained Wagg.
“At the moment we can all see that’s not necessarily the case… but it only makes us even hungrier to work harder, keep making the cars faster and stand on the podium at every round for the rest of the year.
“We have come on strong in the final few rounds in the past two seasons and I expect no difference especially going into Sandown and then Bathurst where we hold the fastest race lap of both Dunlop and main series in both 2014 and 2015.”
Wagg flagged plans to purchase a second Triple Eight COTF chassis over the 2016/17 off-season, when the main series squad is expected to complete the build of its next cars for Shane van Gisbergen and Craig Lowndes.
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