PremiAir Racing has confirmed its team manager and race engineers as its maiden Repco Supercars Championship programme rapidly comes together.
Earlier this week, the team announced Coca-Cola and Subway (for at least the first two rounds) as the naming rights partners of its ZB Commodores to be driven by Chris Pither and Garry Jacobson respectively.
Little had been known of other key personnel involved in the squad, beyond team owner Peter Xiberras and commercial manager Paul Thompson.
Xiberras has now confirmed to Speedcafe.com he has entrusted Dan Ensor with the responsibility of team manager.
“He’s from GT, he’s done Supercars stuff. He’s a young guy but all he knows is motorsport,” Xiberras said.
“I think a few people, their eyebrows will raise when they hear his name because he is a young guy – but without being rude, I don’t want some guy who has done it for 10, 20, 50 years and saying that’s the way they ran it 10 years ago.
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“I don’t want that in this team. It’s got to be different, fresh, new; it’s got to be fun, win, lose or draw.
“The boys do a lot of hours and rather than it being a chore, it’s got to be that they want to be there.
“So basically I wanted to start afresh, a whole new sheet and look at it differently.”
Ken Douglas will be Chris Pither’s race engineer at least for Round 1 at Sydney Motorsport Park, while the existing driver-engineer relationship between Jacobson and Tim Newton will carry on for the entirety of 2022.
“There was a lot of trust last year and that helped me and Tim get to our next level of competitiveness,” Jacobson told Speedcafe.com.
“I think Tim was motivated at the idea I wasn’t a driver that thought I was perfect, and same goes.
“I know that he might not be the best engineer in Australia, and I might not be the best race car driver in Australia, but we know that we’re good enough on our day to get better results and we showed the progress.
“What I love about Tim is that he has tremendous knowledge on the servicing of the car, the subassembly of the car; the mechanical knowledge he has of a Supercar is second to none of the engineers I have ever worked with.”
PremiAir Racing will continue to be based at Darra in Brisbane’s southwest – where its sister drag racing team calls home – in the interim until its newly announced Arundel workshop is ready.
Plans are in place to move into Arundel upon returning from the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix in April.
A PremiAir Racing spokesperson confirmed this morning that the team will press on with its Queensland Raceway pre-season test day today despite inclement weather in the region.
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