Dane officially took up duties on January 1 having spent the final stages of 2025 filling up his notepad while observing the team’s operations.
The Triple Eight founder and long-time leader’s return to the paddock just over a year after departing the powerhouse team’s board is one of the biggest storylines of the new Supercars season.
This time ‘RD’ is aiming to lift the Peter Xiberras-owned squad that has been winless in four seasons to date despite heavy investment from the hire king.
PremiAir enters the year with a revamped driver line-up having signed rookie Jayden Ojeda and Declan Fraser, who returns to a full-time seat after two years as a co-driver.
The team’s Chevrolet Camaros are receiving full rebuilds ahead of the campaign, while Dane’s staff recruitment drive is almost complete.
In the background he’s also searching for a new premises to move the team out of the Arundel, Gold Coast, workshop it has been housed in since 2022.
“We’re looking at a couple of options right now,” Dane told Speedcafe.
“[We want to] give ourselves the best possible working environment, as streamlined as possible.”
While the team will remain “within the vicinity” of its current location, the planned move is about bringing the squad’s operations under one roof.
Dane’s aversion to PremiAir’s current two-building setup is born out of observing Tom Walkinshaw Racing’s UK operations during friend Derek Warwick’s time with the team in the 1980s.
“They were a mishmash of buildings in Kidlington and Oxford,” recalled Dane of TWR.
“[The team] worked surprisingly well but it wasn’t optimised and I’ve always liked the approach of having everything under one roof, hence the layout of Triple Eight at Banyo.
“Here [in Arundel] we’re operating out of two different units. It’s not brilliant.”
Dane said there is no firm timeline on the move, only that it will be done “when the right opportunity is there”.
Coincidentally, Walkinshaw’s Melbourne-based Supercars squad is set to move workshops in coming months, shifting into the Walkinshaw Group’s new mega factory in Dandenong South.
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