Too bad for Ford then – it’s all well and good to offer big pay cheques to Holden drivers to jump the fence, but in ten years time where are the new guys going to be coming from?
The key lies in driver development, and the trend against Ford in this area is not encouraging.
Of the drivers to win the V8 Development Series in a Falcon – only one driver currently drives for the Blue Oval. Mark Winterbottom is now driving the Ford Credit Falcon at Ford Performance Racing, but of his fellow Ford championship winners, well, they’re at Holden.
Ford teams didn’t offer 2004 Konica Minolta champion Andrew Jones a drive, but Garry Rogers Motorsport did. Even though he was sacked before the end of the 2005 series, Jones is back driving for Tasman Motorsport. 2000 and 2005 series winner Dean Canto absolutely annihilated the opposition in last year’s HPDC series, yet despite this, there were no vacancies to incorporate this truly talented driver into Ford’s lineup – he is now spearheading the GRM Holden team and is doing a decent job in the team’s lead car.
So with talent such as this slipping through the cracks at Ford, what can be done to ensure Ford starts grooming a younger generation for the future? A program similar to the Holden Young Lions could be the answer.
There is one franchise available for use in the V8 Supercars main game. If Ford were to encourage a satellite operation to begin in order to provide opportunities for development or open wheeler drivers, the experience allowed in the main game would be invaluable.
A rotational policy similar to Paul Morris Motorsports’ Alan Gurr/Fabian Coulthard combination would also work, allowing several drivers to experience driving in the premier V8 class.
The final option would be to mimic the current Young Lions formula of providing assistance and development to younger drivers across both the V8 Supercar Series and also the Fujitsu series. Invaluable encouragement such as this can be a real boost to fledgling drivers and would be more than suitable to improve young driver quality.
