This was published 7 years ago
Transfer of Holden brand has diehard fans all revved up
By Mark Fogarty
Fan reaction to the transfer of the iconic Holden Racing Team brand to dominant Supercars squad Triple Eight has at best been mixed.
Moving the moniker away from long-time custodian Walkinshaw Racing was never going to be popular with diehard followers, but it is the new look of the old name that is proving most divisive.
The Red Bull Holden Racing Team Commodore.Credit: Mark Fogarty
It is a discordant merger of Triple Eight's existing Red Bull backing with its additional status as the Holden Racing Team, taking over as the sole factory-backed Holden team in Supercars.
Thursday's unveiling of the Red Bull Holden Racing Team prompted plenty of comment on social media, with a sizeable proportion critical of the new livery that adorns the Commodores of defending V8 champion Shane van Gisbergen and record six-time title-winner Jamie Whincup.
The main complaint is that the new look is dominated by the energy drink giant and lacks the traditional graphic cues that were HRT signatures for more than two decades.
Gone is the emblematic lion and helmet logo that featured on the sides of HRT Commodores since the team's inception in 1990.
The change also marks the end of Team Red, which became HRT's alter ego after it adopted Holden's corporate colour as its predominant hue in 1998.
The RBHRT livery is mainly matte blue with large generic Holden signage that appears more Red Bull cerise than Lion scarlet.
Nowhere on the cars does it say Holden Racing Team, which to entrenched followers confirms that the once mighty brand is now but an adjunct.
The traditional lion emblem was never going to sit comfortably with Red Bull's rampant bull symbol and, despite the best efforts of Holden designers, became an inevitable casualty of the alliance.
While Holden's backing is worth at least $2 million a year, Red Bull is the team's primary sponsor – contributing at least $4 million – and commands the main signage rights.
As Holden's flagship Supercars squad, HRT gathered a legion of fans based on its factory alignment as much as its dominance in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
It was the most popular team by far in Supercars and retained a large dedicated following during its decline over the past decade.
Holden ended its backing of the Walkinshaw operation and switched the factory team imprimatur to Triple Eight in a money-saving consolidation of its diminishing motor sport involvement.
Concentrating its support on Triple Eight makes sense as since the team switched from Ford in 2010, it has dominated Supercars and overshadowed HRT, which hasn't been a championship contender since 2009 and hasn't won the Bathurst 1000 since 2011.
It was a far cry from HRT's golden era from 1996-2002, when Craig Lowndes and then Mark Skaife dominated, winning a combined six V8 championships and three Bathurst 1000s.
But to many of the HRT faithful, Triple Eight is still the enemy, regarded as an interloper that hopped on the Holden bandwagon when it lost Ford's backing in a dispute, perhaps ironically, over colour schemes.
Triple Eight dominated the Supercars championship with factory-backed Falcons in 2008-09, but fell out with Ford because it raced them in red in deference to primary sponsor Vodafone rather than being predominantly blue.
There is no doubt that Triple Eight will restore the Holden Racing Team name as a front-runner, which should appease most of HRT's long-suffering fans. But there will remain resistance at an emotional level because in its new guise, Holden Racing Team is more of a label than an entity.
Holden fans need to get used to the idea, however, as the Lion's future in Supercars is inexorably linked with Brisbane-based Triple Eight Race Engineering, which under Anglo-Irish owner Roland Dane – who became an Australian citizen last August – has become the benchmark Supercars team over the past decade.
As well as adopting the HRT appellation, Triple Eight is developing the next-generation Holden Commodore racer to take over next year, powered by a twin-turbocharged V6 allowed under the new Gen2 rules.
Triple Eight will also supply all Holden teams with the main components of the new Commodore racer – the look of which is based on the imported road car replacing the locally made model in 2018 – in a centralisation of supply that will include a single source for the American-made 3.6-litre V6 that will replace the traditional five-litre V8.
The adverse reaction of a large body of fans notwithstanding, Holden – which is committed to Supercars through 2019 – and Triple Eight are convinced the Red Bull HRT amalgamation will eventually win over disaffected fans.
"This is a big moment for us," Dane said at the launch of RBHRT. "I'm very proud of the two big brands we have brought together.
"We want to make sure that we're winning as much as we ever did. So if that has the roll-on effect of underlining the Holden Racing Team as part of Red Bull Holden Racing Team, then we're doing our job."
Van Gisbergen is looking forward to defending his Supercars crown under the HRT banner.
"It's pretty cool," he said. "I grew up in the Skaifey era, when it was the main team. To be part of that history now is pretty awesome. I'm pretty stoked to be a part of all that."
Holden owns the HRT brand and has also kept the rights to the historic lion and helmet logo, which while it may never be seen again on a race car, could return as an off-track symbol. "It's been put on the shelf," Holden's motor sport and sponsorship manager Simon McNamara said. "We looked at how we could make it work with the race team, but it couldn't come together to please everybody. We're very happy with how it's come up. But the (lion/helmet) logo could come back in some way."
McNamara engineered Holden's three-year exclusive deal with Triple Eight, but his future with the company is the subject of speculation. Despite his presence at the RBHRT launch on Thursday and Holden's confirmation that, as of Friday, he was still its motor sport representative, there have been reports that he is about to leave the company.
Sources at Holden indicated that the management of its involvement in Supercars would be "clarified" early this week.