By Thomas Miles
Date posted: November 4, 2022
There is a lot of change circulating Nick Percat after an eventful Boost Mobile Gold Coast 500, where Walkinshaw Andretti United had to deal with another engineer change and a badly bruised #2 Commodore.
It has been revealed former Bathurst 1000 and Supercars championship winning engineer Grant McPherson has been released early to his new home Grove Racing.
McPherson had been Percat’s second of three race engineers in 2022 and remained in the role until this year’s Great Race where car #2 had been on track for a strong result before coming unstuck at Forrest’s Elbow.
WAU team principal Bruce Stewart told supercars.com the team will not hold McPherson and is not afraid to let him go straight to his new Ford team.
“Shippy had an opportunity to have an advancement in his career and like anyone in any race team, particularly ours, if you do get an opportunity to proceed forwards we are not going to stop you,” he said.
“He was with us through Bathurst and agreed to let him move into his new role and start at Grove this week.
“We’ve got to celebrate that and be happy that people are making something better in their lives, or taking a step forwards.”
Grant McPherson enjoyed plenty of success alongside Shane van Gisbergen at Triple Eight Race Engineering. Image: Daniel Kalisz/ LAT Images
The exit of McPherson is a big loss of experience for WAU.
The engineer known as “Shippy” will move to his fourth team having started his Supercars journey at Ford Performance Racing alongside Will Davison and Mark Winterbottom before jumping to Triple Eight Race Engineering in 2015.
At the Banyo-based outfit McPherson enjoyed instant success, engineering Craig Lowndes and Steven Richards’ Bathurst victory before securing the championship in his first year working with Shane van Gisbergen.
He remained at the team through its tense rivalry with Dick Johnson Racing and jumped to WAU following the 2020 season after being forced to endure ‘gardening leave’.
McPherson was the team’s head of performance before stepping in to be Percat’s engineer after the departure of Geoffrey Slater midway through the 2022 season ahead of the Darwin Triple Crown.
But now “Shippy” is on the move again and will join former Triple Eight team member David Cauchi as Grove Racing’s technical director.
Despite being forced to swap Percat’s engineer for a third time in just 12 rounds, WAU is excited by the future with a new face already stepping up and raising some eyebrows.
“It gives us a really good opportunity to progress someone else’s life a little bit further and take them into another stage and that is Adam Austin,” Stewart said.
“Adam has been the greatest little secret in our team because we know he is going to be a great race engineer for a long time.
“He stepped into the role with Nick very well on the Gold Coast.
“For a long way we have had Adam sitting with Nick and looking at a lot of his data so they have had the ability to build up a relationship through the last weeks and months and their communication was straight away on point.
“I can only see really good things blossoming from this relationship.”
Despite the pleasing signs behind the scenes, the weekend ended on a sour note for Percat.
After scoring a top 10 finish on the Saturday, car #2 had its back against the wall on Sunday starting in P19.
Percat only lasted three of the laps after being one of the many innocent victims in the high-profile Beach Chicane accident, which blocked the track and brought out the red flag.
Nick Percat was one of the many cars wiped out by the big Beach Chicane smash-up on Sunday. Image: Mark Horsburgh
The #2 driver was vocal about the tyre bundles which were at the centre of the smash, while his Holden ZB Commodore suffered significant damage at both ends of the car, and especially the rear which got squashed by Macauley Jones.
Despite the big rebuild, WAU team manager Anthony McDonald said the rebuild is looking better than expected with hopes it will be ready to go within 10 days.
“It looks probably a lot worse than it actually was, it had a lot of damage to the external parts of the car (like) the radiator, oil cooler and everything at the rear of the car,” he said to Supercars.com.
“But the chassis does not look too bad so I think we got away with the accident pretty lightly.
“It looks like the cross member damaged, air box, a few arms underneath the car, the crash box at the rear, rear and front rail extensions and all the body work is what we have found so far.
“We were pretty lucky that the person who ran into us went under the car more than straight into the car, so the crash box copped most of the damage.
“We are going to push to have it finished by Friday week. We have a ride day by Tuesday the 15th so Nick can get back in it and make sure there are no issues with it and we can roll out at Adelaide like nothing had happened.”
Austin and Percat will reunite with a rebuilt Commodore at Holden’s final race, the VALO Adelaide 500 from December 1-4.
For more of the latest motorsport news pick up the latest issue of Auto Action.
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