Maro Engel has headed home to Monaco with an uncertain racing future following his forced exit from Erebus Motorsport’s V8 Supercars program.
Despite having a two-year contract to drive in the Australian championship, a downsizing of the Queensland-based squad from three cars to two left no room for the 28-year-old German.
Engel endured a difficult rookie season as he came to terms with a full set of foreign circuits and a Mercedes-AMG V8 Supercar in the early stages of its development.
The result was a 28th finish in the championship; the last of the full-time drivers.
Adding insult to injury, Engel’s final points tally was recently docked 102 points after it emerged that the team had removed an engine seal without the permission of V8 Supercars mid-season.
“As of now I’ve got a valid contract for V8s with Erebus for next year,” Engel told Speedcafe.com before departing Australia.
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“Nothing else has been clear or confirmed so there is obviously a fair amount of discussions to take place.
“Its too early to speak about what I will be doing next year as there are certain things that need to be tied up.
“Once thats occurred I will have a much clearer picture as to what I will be doing next year. I will certainly will be looking for the most competitive and best option for my career.
“I’ve really enjoyed the V8 Supercar Championship and I love the racing.
“Its just a shame that the cars haven’t been as competitive as they should have been.”
Despite the poor results, Erebus CEO Ryan Maddison stressed that dropping Engel was a function of budget restrictions forcing the team to drop back to two cars, and not a negative reflection on his talents.
“We always knew that it would be a tough year as it is for any rookie who comes into V8 Supercars regardless of the background experience,” said Maddison of Engel.
“For Maro the success that he’s had certainly for us in GTs and in GTs in other markets, F3 etc… the decision was made on paper that it just didn’t stack up for us to put that together for next year.
“The plan going forward is a discussion that needs to happen directly with Maro and his management.
“We are looking to provide Maro with multiple options. We would like to talk about what we would like but ultimately Maro needs to be considering what his long term career path is as well if its not in V8s.”
A former Mercedes DTM driver, Engel entered V8 Supercars following a year as part of AMG’s Customer Sports GT3 driver roster.
He was introduced to Erebus through the driver pool last year and was again behind the wheel of one of the team’s SLS GT3 entries at the GT Asia finale in Macau last month.
Although he will likely be offered a place in the team’s GT line-up for next season, whether or not such a proposition is taken up will almost certainly depend on the make-up of Erebus’ plans.
Maddison says that team is still weighing up its international options, while a return to the Australian GT Championship is also on the table.
“We certainly like the steps that Australian GT have taken,” he said, referring to the category’s 2014 calendar which features three rounds with the V8 Supercars Championship.
“It’s not a huge amount of the calendar but at least its three over what we had this year.
“Asia is also a huge opportunity for us; to go back and compete at Macau, whether its the entire Asia GT series or whether its to hand pick a few of the events.
“We’d like to do some of the feature events like the Sepang 12 hour but it needs to stack up for us. We want to go for the ones with crowd attendance so we can give them a bang for their buck on behalf of the brand.
“Longer term Erebus will step into Europe and do endurance events there, but where we go under the Customer Sports banner is something we need to be respectful with.”
Engel, Maddison and a select group of other Erebus representatives attended the weekend’s AMG awards night in Stuttgart, Germany, where the team’s Bathurst 12 Hour success was formally recognised.
