Jaguar near miss

Walkinshaw Andretti United (WAU) was recently announced as the homologation team for Supercars third manufacturer, Toyota. Toyota will join Australia’s pinnacle of motorsport from 2026, but WAU’s Ryan Walkinshaw recently told Mark Fogarty in the Road To Bathurst podcast that Jaguar was nearly on the grid ahead of the Japanese carmaker.

“I’ve been saying for at least 10 years that I thought it would be a great thing for the sport and something that I have been quite ambitious to achieve was bringing a new manufacturer into the sport,” Walkinshaw said.

“We tried that several times and we came very close several times. Probably the closest we got was with Jaguar. Just before Gen3. But Covid unfortunately killed that opportunity.

“That was very, very close. That was almost certainly going to happen. We were at the last stages of that being a program.”

However, Walkinshaw says he is extremely happy to now be representing Toyota.

“When Toyota ended up approaching us and saying they were in [I was very happy], there is no better brand in Australia that you would jump at to try to get into bed with to race in Supercars,” Walkinshaw said.

WAU’s predecessor, Holden Racing Team (HRT) was the General Motors factory team for many years and the WAU boss can’t wait to be a homologation team in Supercars once again.

“It certainly puts us in the same position with the opportunities that we had with HRT. We have factory support and we are back in control of our own destiny, which is really important to us,” Walkinshaw told RTB.

And he is looking forward to the challenge.

“This is the right time for us to get back into that position of being a homologation team and with factory support behind us… I think we are in a good position to try to deliver on results and expectations.”

Click on the link above for the full Ryan Walkinshaw interview.