Triple Eight Race Engineering will focus on continuity and observation throughout its first season under new management as part of a broader three-plus-year plan.
For the first time since joining Supercars in late 2003, Triple Eight is heading into a season without Roland Dane at the helm.
Dane retired as team principal and managing director at the end of last year, with Jamie Whincup taking his place. He has also sold his remaining stake in the business to the seven-time champion driver.
Whincup, Dane’s daughter Jess, and largest shareholder Tony Quinn now make up the team’s three-pronged ownership structure.
While the plan is to keep the status quo as much as possible in the first 12 months, changes are more likely to occur in 2023.
“At the moment it’s very much a year of observation and continuation,” Jess Dane said on the inaugural episode of the Girls On The Grid podcast.
“So trying to keep stuff as much the same as possible because we have got a tried and tested method to run this business that’s worked for almost 30 years on two sides of the world; we’re not going to come in and start messing with that or anything.
“This year is very much a year of observation, particularly for Jamie, who has been involved with the team since 2006… but this is the first time he has been in the workshop every single day. You don’t do that as a driver, so he has got an awful lot to learn.
“So this year is very much taking stock of it all and that continuation and then next year will be the year of ‘okay, well where do we make changes? How do we mould this business so that it more suits Jamie’s style of leadership but while continuing to get the best from the group of people that we have?’
“And then the year after that, with looking at year three of our current structure, then we’ll kind of see if it works or not.
“That second year is always a few teething issues while you’re kind of finding your feet and working out what changes you want to make and implementing those changes. And then that year three is really where you kind of go, ‘knuckle down, is how we’re planning on going to do this going to work?’
“You have got to look at it as a three- to four-year process in any of those transition periods.”
The team has already unveiled its Red Bull Ampol livery for the 2022 Repco Supercars Championship, which starts on March 4-6 at Sydney Motorsport Park.
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