WALKINSHAW LOOKING WIDE FOR NEW TM

Mat Nilsson’s role as team manager of the HSV Racing Team could become permanent, but team boss Ryan Walkinshaw is looking far and wide for a replacement for Adrian Burgess.

After Burgess parted with the team late last week ‘Techo’ Nilsson is overseeing the preparation of the cars of James Courtney and Scott Pye this weekend and could be a long-term solution to who runs the team.

“Mat is auditioning for the job,” Walkinshaw said on Saturday at Winton.

“Mat has a huge wealth of experience and he is doing a great job with our GT3 team, we are leading the championship there.

“We will be going through a proper recruitment process with an agency and see what CV s we get through the door. There’s a couple of targets we are looking at but we will see we get.”

Walkinshaw said that the decision to part ways with Burgess, who has been with the team for three years, was a difficult one.

“These things are always hard. When you are in an organisation, when you are having to make big changes is never something you do without consideration – not something you do lightly.

“It’s never nice to have that kind of meeting with someone, particularly in that role but sometimes these things need to happen.

“It certainly wasn’t a simple reaction to a poor week at Perth or other poor weekends before that. We have had bad race weekends in the past, and we will have bad race weekends in the future.

“But I don’t think it is unreasonable for someone in my family’s position to expect an increase in performance year on year. We haven’t seen that and that was the reason why.

“I am not going to comment on whether we should or shouldn’t have done it earlier.”

Walkinshaw said that the team’s priority continues to be “focusing on our long-term objectives in the sport”.

“The last couple of seasons we have been going around in circles a little bit but for us that is not acceptable. We want to be a team with, at least, increases performance year-on-year and that doesn’t sit with where we have been.”

Walkinshaw talking to the media this morning

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