The squad has confirmed the exit of Stephen Robertson, who had led the Gold Coast-based team since joining ahead of the 2023 Sandown 500.
Into his place steps Pete Vale, who, as previously reported, has been poached from Matt Stone Racing by the Peter Xiberras-owned squad.
Although until now unconfirmed by the team, Robertson’s intention to leave PremiAir and take a break from the sport had been somewhat of an open secret since Taupo.
The timing of the changeover had been unclear and is understood to have been brought forward after Vale was relieved of his MSR duties almost immediately after handing in his notice.
Xiberras thanked Robertson for his efforts with the changeover.
“Earlier this year, Robbo decided to step back from full-time motorsport to pursue a personal passion,” explained Xiberras.
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“While I can’t give too many details away, I recommend keeping an eye on social media over the coming months, as ‘RobTok’ is set to launch his exciting new project!
“In the meantime, Stephen has remained actively involved to ensure a smooth transition, and we are incredibly grateful for his outstanding leadership and the lasting contribution he has made to our team’s growth.
“We wish Stephen all the very best as he embarks on his next chapter.
“Peter – who is highly credentialed in Supercars land – will be on track with us in Tasmania, and we hope you will join us in giving him a warm welcome as he starts his journey with us.”
Symmons Plains will also mark the first event for PremiAir’s recently appointed CEO, Gwyn Dolphin, and a return for Xiberras having missed Taupo to attend his son’s wedding.
The other side of the unexpected mid-season manager shuffle is MSR, which quickly dealt with Vale’s exit the week prior to its Supercars returning from New Zealand.
Matt Stone has retaken the team principal title given to Vale when he joined the squad three years ago and says the surprise departure won’t upset momentum.
“One of the big things for us is that we’ve been building redundancy obviously with a large engineering team and Paul Forgie in a not direct [race] engineering role this year,” Stone told Speedcafe.
“As well as having myself a lot more hands-on than some other team owners, we’ve been able to not really be affected.
“I’ll take on a portion of the direct responsibilities, but a fair amount of the responsibilities will be divvied out to three or four other people within the organisation.
“So effectively we’re not replacing the role, we’re just breaking it into three or four pieces and dividing it up and we’ll reallocate those resources to growing the engineering team further.”
MSR sits sixth in the Supercars teams’ championship after three rounds, three places ahead of PremiAir.
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