BJR avoiding ‘master/slave’ Toyota relationship

The four-car BJR outfit was on Saturday confirmed as Toyota’s second team, ensuring the Japanese marque will have six Supras on the grid in 2026.

WAU was anointed as Toyota’s homologation squad last September and is currently working with Supercars on the development of the Supra body and Toyota V8 race engine.

The second team deal reconnects BJR with the Walkinshaw squad, with which it had a customer relationship in the closing stages of the Project Blueprint era.

BJR has been aligned to Triple Eight at various points since, from buying Intellectual Property early in the Car of the Future era to last year inking a customer setup/data deal.

Triple Eight also currently has similar arrangements with PremiAir Racing and Matt Stone Racing, which pay for the right to access information from the Red Bull Ampol Racing Camaros.

Those Triple Eight ties are all coming to an end at the conclusion of this season thanks to the Brisbane-based outfit’s impending switch to Ford.

First BJR Toyota Supercars driver locked in

“It’s a different relationship,” said Jones of BJR’s new link with WAU.

“If you look at the way that the Triple Eight relationship works with the teams, or in the past, most of the teams, a lot of the information they keep within the group, where this is not the sort of relationship we have.

“We are in lots of ways equal… and we just have one goal, which is to make the Supra as competitive as we can, as quickly as we can.

“And that’s what we’ll both be trying to do.”

Triple Eight’s defection left Jones with the choice of sticking with GM and joining its proposed new collaborative ‘Team Chevy’ data pool program or making the leap to Toyota.

First BJR Toyota Supra build underway

“With Triple Eight moving to Ford and GM trying to put together packages where the data gets shared between all the teams, I think it’s really important to have the sort of collaborative relationship that we’re working really hard on,” Jones added.

“I think the fact that we’ll have six cars out there and we’ll be working hand-in-hand with each other, not so much as a master/slave type relationship, where there’s someone that sells you all the information, but actually legitimately sharing what we’ve got will be really good and I feel that is a really strong point for us in our union.

“So, there’s lots of exciting things about the build and such that’s going on, but for me, when we come to a race meeting, I think having six cars is really important.”