KELLY RACING CONTINUES ON

The Kelly name will disappear from the Supercars championship entry list in 2022, but it will be present on the grid for years to come.

The Kelly family is selling its remaining 50 per cent share in its Supercars team to the Grove Group at the end of the season, ending a 13-year run as team owners for Bathurst-winning brothers Todd and Rick Kelly.

However, while the Groves – led by patriarch Stephen Grove – will purchase what’s now known as Kelly Grove Racing, the back-end of the operation, still known as Kelly Racing, remains the sole property of the Kelly family.

Amongst a long list of racing-related tasks it already performs, Kelly Racing supplies control components to Supercars teams for the current Gen2 category.

Its future involvement appears assured too, having already won contracts to supply the Gen3 category due to kick off in August 2022.

“We do a lot of work for other teams for all the control Gen2 parts, whether it be rear upright, suspension arms, wheel nuts, spindles whatever,” Kelly confirmed.

“We’re already making a lot of chassis parts so far [for Gen3].

“We are just waiting for the suspension and upright tenders to come out and hopefully we can win a few of those as well.”

Kelly Racing, which is situated adjacent to Kelly Grove Racing in the same complex in Braeside includes a CNC machine shop, an engine department and various production departments including composites and a paint shop.

It has been the site where Project Blueprint Holden Commodores, Car of the Future Nissan Altimas and Gen2 Mustangs have all been developed.

Kelly Racing will retain ownership of the current KGR Gen2 Ford Mustangs, including the car currently being built for Andre Heimgartner, and will continue to maintain and develop them and their Ford pushrod engines for as long as they race into 2022.

While he has slaved to get the team’s Ford V8s up to speed since 2019, Todd Kelly will not travel to the tracks in 2022 to look after the engines.

“Watching Supercars on TV will be quite strange after the long stint at tracks,” he said.

Kelly Racing will continue to have a relationship with the Grove-owned team in the Gen3 era, but given the level of homogenisation of the new cars and engines, the engineering workload is likely to be reduced.

Kelly Racing will not fabricate the Grove team’s new Gen3 Mustang chassis, which are being built by supplier Pace Innovations.

Kelly Racing will also retain the ownership of two Nissan Altimas. It could also be involved in some form of Super2 program in 2022 to run another Altima owned by amateur racer Stuart Eustice.

Todd Kelly will continue to oversee Kelly Racing. While Rick, who retired from racing at the end of 2020 will be a silent partner. The business currently employs 8-9 staff.

On top of its existing workload, Kelly Racing is potentially open to new engineering projects.

“There will be a long future for everyone out the back to continue what we are doing,” Todd Kelly said. “And you never know what projects walk in the door.

‘We have a fair amount of experience out there, especially with the Ford engine and Nissan engine over the years.

“We could potentially take on engineering projects that are exciting and interesting to do, but we are not going to advertise work to come in for road cars and things like that.

“We are not desperate for work, we are just about to capacity now. it will be things that we like doing and are cool to take on.”

Kelly Racing is a small part of a larger business group the brothers oversee on behalf of the family. They include a caravan park in Mildura and Steeline, a roofing manufacturing company.

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