Triple Eight Team Manager Mark Dutton believes that Adrian Burgess should not be allowed to go directly from the Supercars Head of Motorsport role to Team 18.
It was confirmed this morning by Team 18 that Burgess will be joining the squad in February 2024, as Team Principal, with his departure from Supercars only announced last week.
While he is absent from this weekend’s Vailo Adelaide 500, his privileged access to data in his role as HoM has caused a sore point among rival teams in pit lane.
Those squads including Triple Eight Race Engineering, with Dutton now going on the record with his objections.
“No he shouldn’t be,” said Dutton on the question of whether or not Burgess should be allowed to move to a team so quickly.
“It’s really, really that simple. You need to have a non-compete [clause] at this level.”
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He was speaking as part of the Vailo Adelaide 500 team boss press conference, which also featured Burgess’ successor Tim Edwards, who is Tickford Racing’s CEO/Team Principal for one more event.
Edwards said he was planning on a sabbatical from motorsport until Wednesday last week, a day before Speedcafe made the link between Burgess and Team 18, by which time a furore had erupted among competitors about the prospect.
Dutton continued, referring to Edwards, “Here’s one to throw it back; if you said ‘on Wednesday’, I take it that means that the contract signed on Wednesday… Does the contract correct the mistakes of the old?
“Because, not having a non-compete for someone in that position with that much exposure is a mistake.”
Erebus Motorsport CEO Barry Ryan agreed with Dutton’s sentiments.
“I echo Mark’s thoughts,” said Ryan.
“It’s a crazy situation that someone can have all that knowledge and not have some sort of restriction on them.
“Every other sport in the world, there’s no way it would have been allowed to happen.
“So, it’s something that Supercars have got to look at and fix, I think, but that’s just my opinion.”
Dutton argues that Supercars needs to invest in the cost of so-called ‘gardening leave’ in such situations in order to protect the integrity of the championship.
“I don’t know the ins and outs of what contracts he’s signed, et cetera, but it’s something [for] a category of Supercars’ level that you have to pay upfront,” he asserted.
“No one likes paying gardening leave because it seems like it’s dead money but that’s an investment that you have to do in those roles.
“Because, I believe, when you hire the person, you’ve got to be prepared that that’s an expense on the way out, to protect the other teams, and keep the integrity of the sport at the level it should be.
“So whether something should be done about it now, that’s not for me to say; that’s more of a legal matter.”
Even Edwards, who is making the opposite step, opined that the issue is an even greater one now given how little of a team’s own intellectual property is in its cars.
“It’s an interesting one,” he said.
“It’s not happened before; someone from Supercars crossing the divide with so much information and it’s probably more relevant now than it’s ever been.
“Because in the past, even if you knew the pick-up points of all of the different cars, everyone’s upright’s designed differently, everyone had different engines, there was a lot more differences with the car.
“Whereas now, when we’ve all got exactly the same pick-up points, the same dampers, all those things, it does become more of an issue than it’s ever probably been in the past because of the similarity of the cars.
“But anyway, he signed an employment contract many, years ago, way before Gen3.”
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