There will be no more than eight Triple Eight Race Engineering VE Commodores built in the next two years, until more details are revealed on V8 Supercars’ Car of the Future.
Ahead of the champion team’s launch of its new Commodores tomorrow, Triple Eight boss Roland Dane told Speedcafe.com.au that his team will only construct eight VEs – Four for his TeamVodafone outfit, the ride car which was completed late last year, and three race cars for technical partner Paul Morris Motorsport.
“We have committed to ourselves that we will build eight Commodores and there’s no plan to build anymore until such time that the Car of the Future is set in stone,” he said.
“When Car of the Future happens, we’ll start on those, whenever that is.
“We’ve already build the ride car which is already finished and tested and then we’ve got four race cars for ourselves and three for Paul Morris Motorsport – and we don’t intend on doing any more.
“The four race cars we will have here will alternate between Jamie (Whincup) and Craig (Lowndes).”
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TeamVodafone’s two drivers Whincup and Lowndes, plus PMM’s Supercheap Auto Commodore for Russell Ingall will start the 2010 V8 Supercars Championship Series in brand-new T8-built Commodore VEs, while the second T8 PMM Commodore will be ready for new Castrol driver Greg Murphy at the first Australian V8 round – the Clipsal 500 in March.
While there may only be four T8 Commodores in the field, there are another four T8-built Falcons this year – three for Dick Johnson Racing and one for Triple F Racing.
“There are eight Triple Eight due out this year – four Fords and four Holdens, and that’s means there’s somewhere around 30 percent of the field are built by us. I’m pretty proud of that,” Dane says.
“I don’t think it would be a good idea to have any more than that. I think one of the strengths of the series is variety. There’s quite a few different ways of skinning a cat at the moment.
“I’m happy to be selling components to the vast majority of teams in the championship in one way or another, so we don’t have to sell complete cars necessarily. We’re happy to sell parts to a whole range of teams.”
TeamVodafone will launch its 2010 Commodore race car at midday tomorrow in Sydney ahead of the team’s first test at Queensland Raceway on Monday, February 8. The team will back-up the following day as part of the official V8 Supercars test.
