WITH six prior Bathurst 1000 starts Tim Blanchard has an idea of what lies ahead for him in this year’s Great Race, but it will mark his first campaign as a team owner.
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Ahead of this season Blanchard purchased a Racing Entitlements Contract from Super Black Racing.
He opted to run his entry under the Brad Jones Racing banner – the same team he represented in season 2016.
Blanchard saw the move as a way to secure his long-term future in Supercars, the former Mike Kable Young Gun award winner keen to move into management once his driving career is over.
Though ownership has added an extra dimension to Blanchard’s campaign in his CoolDrive Racing Commodore, he said he does not feel any additional pressure.
“Not really, Brad Jones and the BJR team look after the management side of things and I can just concentrate on the driving,” he said.
“If anything it’s less stressful when you have ownership in the team you have a bit of a say about what’s happening in the future. It means I can just concentrate on driving and not worry about any of the off-track distractions.”
One of those matters Blanchard had a say in was deciding on his co-driver for this year’s endurance rounds. He opted to have 22-year-old Todd Hazelwood.
“There were a few changes internally here which meant that there was a vacancy alongside me for the endurance races,” Blanchard, who paired with Macauley Jones last year, said.
“We came up with a bit of a short list, Brad [Jones] prepared it and said Todd’s doing very well in the Super2 Series and leading the championship at the moment, so it was a pretty straight forward choice in the end.
“He’s driving the cars regularly and doing a good job at the moment. He was kind of the standout of those co-drivers who were available.”
Hazelwood’s Enduro Cup debut at Sandown did not play out as he would have hoped, the young talent involved in a high-speed crash in qualifying.
The extensive damage the Commodore suffered meant Blanchard and Hazelwood were not able to line up in Sunday’s race.
It was an incident that upset the young talent, but he showed his mettle not long after the incident.
He got back behind the wheel to contest the Super2 Series race. Hazelwood also spent Friday giving the new CoolDrive chassis a shakedown ahead of the 1000.
Blanchard was happy to see him back driving, but knows another challenge awaits.
“Going to Bathurst in the main series, it’s still a pretty big step, so it’s going to be a big leaning curve for him,” he said.