Erebus Motorsport has revised its engineering structure, creating a new role of performance manager for existing race engineer Wes McDougall.
McDougall will continue to engineer the team’s #47 Mercedes-Benz AMG until the end of the season, after which point he’ll concentrate solely on the management position.
An nine-year veteran of the formerly Stone Brothers Racing outfit, McDougall has worked on the Tim Slade entry since the soon-to-depart driver joined the team in 2010.
“We identified an area where we thought we were weak in our engineering capabilities,” Erebus team manager David Stuart told Speedcafe.com of the move.
“We spoke to Wes about it and felt that having him in that role throughout the rest of the year and particularly in 2014 will give us a much better overview and comprehension of what we need to do to the cars to improve our performance.
“If Tim had stayed we may have gone a different route, but with Tim moving on it’s good timing for Wes to make the career progression.”
It remains unclear how many entries Erebus will run in 2014, with its upper-management having publicly discussed the possibilities of scaling back to two cars or expanding to four.
Erebus took the best finish of its maiden V8 Supercars season last time out at the Sandown 500, with Lee Holdsworth and Craig Baird combining to take a fourth placed finish.
Although the team had expressed hope of having fuel economy-based engine upgrades on the car for Bathurst, time constraints are expected to see the Queensland-based squad head to Mount Panorama with a largely unchanged technical package.
V8 Supercars confirmed at the weekend that it will mandate seven stops for Bathurst in an attempt to help the currently thirstier Mercedes and Nissan entries.
The Sandown performance now has Erebus figuring as a darkhorse for Bathurst success; a feat that Stuart believes can be achieved if everything falls the team’s way.
“If we do our homework right in the workshop and hit the ground running with good speed like we did at Sandown, then I can’t see any reason why we wouldn’t be able to have some cars qualify in the top 10 and race with the leading pack,” he said.
“Everybody goes to Bathurst to win the race, but if we do everything right as a team both before and during the weekend, then I think we’re as good a chance as anybody.”
Erebus’ Tim Slade/Andrew Thompson entry finished just 21st at Sandown after a late-race refuelling blunder necessitated an extra stop, while the third car of Maro Engel/Steven Johnson was 25th after being delayed by brake problems.
