Victorian Supercars squad Team 18 has announced a reshuffle to its engineering line-up ahead of the 2022 Repco Supercars Championship.
Chief Engineer Richard Hollway will also take on the role of Race Engineer with Scott Pye in the #20 Holden Commodore this year, while Manuel Sanchez will engineer Mark Winterbottom for the third straight season in the #18 car.
As a race engineer Hollway was part of four Bathurst 1000 wins and five consecutive championships with the Holden Racing Team, before spending a decade at Garry Rogers Motorsport as Chief Engineer, scoring multiple race and round wins.
Sanchez, who joined the team in 2020 following a six-year stint at GRM, will continue to work with the 2013 Bathurst winner and 2015 Supercars Champion to build on their tenth position in the championship in 2021.
The race engineers will be supported by Data Engineers Mark Sylvester and Rory Jackermis on Pye’s and Winterbottom’s cars respectively.
The structural change has come about following the departure of the team’s former chief engineer and race engineer Phil Keed, who has been with the team for the last three seasons.
Keed joined the squad at the commencement of the 2019 season and playing a critical role in the early growth and expansion to a two-car outfit in 2020. Team 18 wishes to thank Phil for his contribution to the team and wish him all the best with his future endeavours.
The team will carry over its mechanical lineup across both cars, with Pye and Winterbottom set to remain in their existing Triple Eight chassis for the final year of the Gen-2 technical regulations.
Team 18 will continue to prepare for the commencement of the 2022 Repco Supercars Championship at the Beaurepaires Sydney SuperNight on March 4-6.
Team 18 2022 Engineering Lineup
Chief Engineer/Race Engineer (Car #20), Richard Hollway
Race Engineer (Car #18), Manuel Sanchez
Data Engineer (Car #20), Mark Sylvester
Data Engineer (Car #18), Rory Jackermis
QUOTES
Charlie Schwerkolt, Owner – Team 18
“As a team we’ve made a couple of tweaks to our structure for the start of the 2022 season,” said Charlie Schwerkolt.
“We’ve got ‘Krusty’ [Hollway] who’ll now work with Scott Pye on the #20 car, with Manuel Sanchez continuing with Frosty [Winterbottom] on the #18 for the third straight year which is great for them.”
“It’s an exciting change for the #20 car, both Krusty and Scott have already been in the race shop bouncing ideas off each other and we’re looking forward to seeing what they can achieve this year.”
“Phil [Keed] has made an incredible contribution to this team over the last three years and we wish him all the best with the next phase of his career.
“The team is a hive of activity at the moment and the energy amongst the staff has been so strong leading into the new season.”