Ingall confirmed for Prodrive Gold Coast start

Russell Ingall will drive alongside Cameron Waters at the Castrol Gold Coast 600, Prodrive Racing Australia has confirmed.

The 51-year-old has been drafted into the team following Chaz Mostert’s season-ending crash at Bathurst, which left the youngster with a broken leg and wrist.

The Gold Coast will see Ingall become the first driver to reach the 250 ATCC/V8 Supercars Championship event starts milestone.

It will come just a fortnight after Ingall competed at Bathurst with the Holden Racing Team, where he substituted for James Courtney.

Courtney is expected to return to action on the Gold Coast, leaving Ingall to chase a seemingly unlikely return to the Blue Oval.

A Holden man for the bulk of his career, the veteran’s 2005 V8 Supercars Championship title came amid a five-year stint in Stone Brothers Falcons.

Ingall will combine Gold Coast racing duties with his Fox Sports commentary role, as he did at Sandown and Bathurst.

“Thankfully with the format of racing, when the races are actually on myself, Mark Skaife and Jessica (Yates) hand over to the commentary team so it’s actually worked in quite good that they’ve allowed me to do this,” said Ingall.

“It brings more of an insight into what happens behind the scenes with some of these top race teams and obviously Prodrive at the moment is the top team and it’s the one everyone’s chasing so it’s going to be good to actually get in and find out the reasons why they’re doing all this winning.

“It’s going to be great a part of that to jump in with Cam and also give an evaluation on that because obviously Cam’s hot property at the moment and I know how he feels when I got into the championship out of the gate. It can be daunting. Hopefully I can give him some advice on both sides of the seat.

“There’d be no reason at all why we couldn’t get a pretty reasonable result; definitely a top five result.”

Speedcafe.com revealed earlier this week that Ingall was a shock candidate for the Prodrive seat, which drew a typically prickly response from the veteran on social media.

Prodrive team principal Tim Edwards meanwhile says that Ingall’s experience makes him the ideal substitute driver at the Gold Coast.

“It’s great to have Russell on board. He has a lot of experience at the Gold Coast circuit which was what we were looking for,” Edwards said.

“Our aim is to keep our lead in the team’s championship so that means avoiding a DNF next week.

“Russell has also worked with our car #6 race engineer Adam De Borre so they already know how the other operates which will make the process that much easier.

“Practice on Friday will be really important for both of them but particularly for Russell who will need to acclimatise with the car.”

Russell Ingall’s V8 Gold Coast career record

*Non-championship