The Super2 campaigner’s Thursday at Sandown included helping apply a striking new livery to the Chevrolet Camaro his family-run team will field as a wildcard in the Sandown 500.
Father and team boss Amin Chahda went public with the squad’s funding struggles on Monday, creating a wave of attention that dragged in a host of new sponsors.
They are headlined by naming rights partner Boost Mobile, but also include Southern Cross Truck Rentals and Shaw and Partners.
MCM is running two cars at Sandown – the Camaro for Chahda and co-driver Brad Vaughan and its Super2 Commodore for rookie Aron Shields.
“Frank (Karlovecz, MCM sponsorship manager) rang me on Tuesday to say the deal with Boost was done, which was awesome,” Amin Chahda explained to Speedcafe.
“We were still at work preparing the cars and my head was spinning from that. I’d just climbed out from under the Super2 car and my phone was ringing again, it was an unknown number.
“It was Steve (Blackmore) from Southern Cross Truck Rentals and he said, ‘I want to be involved, who do I talk to?’ I said, ‘me, I’m the guy to talk to’.
“He said, ‘all right, I’m in, and Earl (Evans) will give you a call from Shaw and Partners as well’.
“I was standing there in the workshop with dirty hands and it all happened. I just went ‘wow’.”
Arrangements for the livery and last-minute additions to new race suits for drivers Chahda and Brad Vaughan were made on Wednesday.
“The car was still sitting in the workshop [Wednesday] afternoon. It was still on the stands at quarter-to-five,” Amin Chahda continued.
“We finished the Super2 car off an hour early, I said ‘put it in the truck, get it out of here’. My anxiety level needed to come down a bit.
“So we were just focusing on the Gen3 car, but the stickers weren’t going to be ready for another couple of hours, so we decided to put it in the truck too and put them on down here.
“At quarter-past nine last night we left Albury with all the stickers. We got here about 1:30am or something, went to bed, woke up and put the stickers on the car.
“Supercars were good, they gave dispensation to get the car out of the truck first thing this morning because we weren’t allowed to unload, just to purely get the stickers on, that helped out a fair bit.”
Matt Chahda was among those applying the stickers at the circuit amid other setup duties ahead of opening practice on Friday.
“That’s how we do it in Super2,” Matt smiled of applying the livery.
“All the guys got involved, which is cool. We’ve been able to pull in all these mechanics, ex-main game guys and stuff, but they still are willing to do jobs like put stickers on the car.
“It shows the whole team is willing to do what they need to do to get it done. It’s become the culture around here.”
While Chahda is used to being hands-on with most aspects of his family team, he’s been trying to take a step back this week.
“I came up a couple of days early and I’ve been staying out of most of it on purpose, because day-to-day I still do a hell of a lot of the prep and run a lot of the business,” he said.
“So we thought we’d get me to escape all that for at least a couple of days in the build-up to it, and even some of the jobs here I’m looking at it thinking I should do it, but I’m leaving it for the guys to do.
“I’ve got a different responsibility now.”
Chahda Sr refers to his squad’s attitude as ‘the spirit of the bush’ and is proud to bring a family-run team to the Supercars pitlane.
“It’s pretty cool,” said Chahda, whose team is pitted alongside the Triple Eight wildcard headlined by star driver Craig Lowndes.
“There was a moment today when I paused and thought, ‘it’s actually happening, we’re here’.
“It’s a pretty wicked birthday present for Matt!”
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