Former Triple Eight race engineer joins Tickford Supercars effort

Tickford Racing has announced Chris Stuckey as race engineer for Declan Fraser in the 2023 Repco Supercars Championship.

Fraser, who replaces Jake Kostecki in the #56 Ford Mustang, will embark on his rookie campaign in the top tier after winning last year’s Dunlop Super2 Series with Triple Eight Race Engineering.

Stuckey has over a decade of experience which also includes a recent stint in Triple Eight’s Super2 effort, working on the Angelo Mouzouris car in 2021 as well as filling a contract role at Matt Stone Racing, before joining the latter on a full-time basis to engineer Todd Hazelwood last year.

Tickford’s driver and race engineering line-up is otherwise unchanged, those combinations being Cam Waters/Sam Potter (Car #6), James Courtney/Sam Scaffidi (#Car #5), and Thomas Randle/Raymond Lau (Car #55).

The previous Car #56 race engineer, Rhys Lenegan, has moved back to his home state of Western Australia but continues to perform contract work for the team.

Brad Wischusen has been named as Chief Engineer, the position filled by Nathaniel Osborne, who departed for a job outside of motorsport at the end of the 2022 campaign.

The Rod Nash- and Sven Burchartz-owned operation continues to be headed up by CEO/Team Principal Tim Edwards, and Team Manager Matt Roberts.

The latter and Crew Chief Simon Robinson will also continue as car controllers for the respective Tickford garages, while Blake Adamson and Bayden Charlton remain as Data Engineers, with Adam Mittek heading up the team’s machine shop and CAM programming.

In the Dunlop Super2 Series, Dilan Talabani will be race engineer for Brad Vaughan and Daniel Veronese for Elly Morrow, with the programme led by Team Manager Kate Harrington.

Edwards said the general stability in the Campbellfield-based squad was important given the change in technical ruleset to Gen3 in this year’s Supercars Championship.

“We’re glad to be heading into 2023 with a lot of continuity across our crew,” he remarked.

“There are a few new faces, but the vast majority are familiar ones.

“Our returning drivers and engineers are staying paired together, our car crews are virtually unchanged, and just about every department is made up of the same people as we had in 2022.

“We’ve had pretty minimal turnover and for the most part we’ve kept the family together, which heading into a really pivotal year is a really nice thing to have.

“For obvious reasons Gen3 is a huge change. Building four new cars is a massive project, but having those established relationships and dynamics in the workplace gives us confidence that the cars and the team will be well-prepared when we hit the track.

“It’s one less variable we need to navigate this time of year, and we’re optimistic that with that continuity we can position ourselves in the best way possible for the year ahead.”

Meanwhile, Tickford’s relationship with Team Navy is now into its 12th season, with the Supercars squad welcoming Leading Seaman Nicholas Reid, Leading Seaman Benjamin Woodley, and Able Seaman Quinten Lay to the fold in mid-January to fill workshop and race track roles.

Both Waters and Randle are set to test at Winton today after shakedowns of their Gen3 Mustangs at the rural Victorian circuit in recent days.