The 26-year-old reached out to Richards following a tumultuous start to the 2026 campaign in which he has proven fast but incident-prone.
Richards’ role is being likened to Greg Murphy’s mentorship of Ryan Wood and Garth Tander’s position at Grove Racing, where he works with Matt Payne and Kai Allen.
Cameron capped his Symmons Plains weekend with a fine seventh place finish, having started 10th following disqualification from the Shootout for a technical breach.
“It’s obviously been a bit of a rough start to the year for Camo, the speed’s been there, just a lot of little things constantly going wrong,” Tim Blanchard told Speedcafe.
“We’ve been talking the last few weeks about how we can approach this differently.
“We’ve seen a similar approach with Matt Payne and Woody work quite well and Richo is obviously well known to our team and families.
“We said to Camo that he probably needs to get someone to help support him and help coach him who is not a team person, someone who’s in Camo’s corner.”
Richards, 53, first came across Cameron when the now Supercars driver was racing karts against son Clay.
The typically understated Richards said his role with Cameron is largely that of an observer who adds the occasional piece of honest feedback.
“He’s a fast young guy, full of courage and bravery, like a lot of young guys, and he’s got the benefit of being very successful in everything he’s driven to date,” Richards told Speedcafe.
“But I think the hard thing is when you step into Supercars, you’ve got guys that can step into NASCAR and win outright on a street course…
“You’ve got young guys that go and race open wheelers for the first time against the world’s best and get wins and pole positions.
“It’s a bit like going from VFL to AFL. You’re the king of the kids in that realm and you step in here and you go, ‘holy shit’.
“I’m just trying to soften that edge a little bit.
“The less you get involved in [incidents], funnily enough, the more you end up being closer to the front of the field.
“It’s pretty simple.”
Richards said the arrangement was “just a weekend thing”, with his contribution to be reviewed following Symmons Plains.
“I guess we’ll talk about it further and see if there was some value to it,” he said.
“From my perspective, it’s about keeping out of his way all weekend and, when he’s got five minutes, sit down with him and have a chat.”
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