THE EINSTEIN FACTOR

The Einstein Factor – Image: LAT

Foges and Dick Johnson Racing’s Ryan Story go head-to-head in the latest edition of Up Front With Foges.

Below is a sample of what’s featured in the bumper 72-page Christmas issue of AUTO ACTION, out now.

Will 2021 be a rebuilding year or is the plan to continue at the front of the field?

Well, of course, you want to run at the front, but you can’t escape the fact that it’s a very competitive championship.

This year we won the teams’ championship and the drivers’ championship, but it certainly wasn’t the same as, say, 2017 when we had cars up the front each and every race. That’s our aim and that’s certainly what we want to do.

We have very good equipment by way of cars and we have a very good team. Our team’s led by Ben Croke, Josh Silcock, Ludo Lacroix, Perry Kapper and Nick Hughes in engineering, so the personnel side of things remains the same.

We have very strong commercial support and backing. The biggest change outside of Penske is the two drivers.

Given how much success the team has had, why did Penske pull out?

They were quite open about that in terms of the ramifications that COVID-19 has had on their business.

I mean, at one point in time, they’d furloughed nearly half of their 60,000-odd staff, so I think that does bring things into perspective.

In some respects, racing has been Roger Penske’s golf game and he often jokes as much, but the reality is that in terms of some of what we set out to achieve and the mission that we had at DJR Team Penske, which was to turn Penske into a household name and to build awareness of their operations in Australia and New Zealand, we achieved a lot of those goals and ticked a lot of those boxes.

Why did you let (Fabian) Coulthard go and why do you think Will Davison is a better fit?

We made a business decision and commercial decision, and at the end of the day, all driver choices are geared around that.

What can you build around the team commercially; how can you have a cohesive unit that’s capable of working together and achieving mutually set goals? And, for me, it was a very clear decision.

Not taking anything away from Fabian or anyone else, but the best step for us was to proceed with Anton and Will.

Read the rest of the interview in the season-ending 72-page issue of Auto Action.

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