The Blanchard Racing Team driver had planned to race in the Townsville and Sandown Super2 rounds to complement his Supercars co-driving duties with James Courtney.
However, during his round-winning weekend in Townsville, Perkins was told that he’d be ineligible for Sandown due to a rule restricting double-duties.
A detailed application for dispensation was denied by Supercars, which caused an uproar when Perkins made the matter public.
While that appeared to end the saga, Perkins and BRT didn’t give up and undertook an extraordinary mission in order to change Supercars’ mind.
“Unfortunately our initial request wasn’t successful with Supercars,” detailed Perkins in the wake of the Sandown weekend.
“But we asked the question about how we can get on the grid because the public support was fantastic and indeed some of our peers were very supportive of us racing.
Buy tickets
“Supercars were happy to work with us, thankfully, and they asked us to complete a few tasks of which the most important one was getting all Super2 teams to approve it.
“This involved both Tim Blanchard from Blanchard Racing Team and myself ringing and communicating with each and every team to basically ask for permission to race.
“Thankfully all of the teams were very good to deal with on this, some teams had some minor concerns but we were able to communicate with them all and get to a point where everyone was able and willing to sign off on us racing.
“We received dispensation to race on the afternoon of Monday 9th September, which was the week of the Sandown race!
“This wasn’t ideal preparation for us as a team, but thankfully the Blanchard Racing Team were able to prepare the car in the few days we had!”
The effort was more than worthwhile as Perkins scored pole and victory with a classy performance in tricky conditions during the Sandown opener.
To do so he had to hold out Erebus Academy young gun Jobe Stewart, driving the Commodore ZB that Perkins had contested the bulk of the series in last year.
It was a much-needed boost for BRT amid a tough weekend for its Supercars Championship squad that included a heavy crash for Aaron Love in qualifying.
Perkins ended up third in the Super2 round result after a sixth-place finish in the Sunday race from ninth on the grid.
He and Courtney then finished 18th in the Sandown 500, struggling with a down-on-power engine that expired early on Monday’s ride day.
Discussion about this post