MOTORSPORT: Holden confirms boom recruit Team Vodafone

It's official -- Holden has snared V8 Supercar's dominant team, returning Craig Lowndes and Jamie Whincup to the Lion camp next year.

And it was Holden that proposed the marriage with Roland Dane's Triple Eight Race Engineering/Team Vodafone, not a case of Dane knocking on the General's doors.

The atmosphere was electric at Holden's Fishermans Bend headquarters in Melbourne this morning as incoming chief executive Alan Batey confirmed to the media and hundreds of Holden workers what we first reported yesterday -- the recruitment of Team Vodafone to the Holden camp.

Reassuring for fans was that the traditional passion for motorsport among senior executives at the Bend that seemed to have dimmed, even before the global economic meltdown, is burning as brightly as ever in new "captain-coach" Batey, even if it will now be concentrated heavily on just two teams -- Holden Racing Team and Team Vodafone.

Batey's address, apart from containing the big announcement, was like a footy grand final rev-up.

He admitted after the presentation that he felt like a kid who had just got precisely what he wanted for Christmas.

And he said that it was all part of grander Holden plans that include Commodore engine upgrades in the very near future and a new production line in Adelaide to build the small Cruze.

Batey, a long-time General Motors man originally from England, and Dane, of Irish origin but now proudly Australian, go back more than 12 years to a Vauxhall racing deal in the UK.

Unlike Ford, Holden can not only live with Dane's top-shelf sponsorship portfolio but indeed welcomes it, happy to be a subsidiary presence on the cars to the red Vodafone livery that so troubled the Blue Oval chiefs.

What Holden, and Batey, wanted most of all was a winner -- and one that it foresees will motivate (Tom) Walkinshaw's factory-bankrolled HRT to perform to its maximum.

An announcement about HRT is expected this Friday ahead of the weekend's Sandown round of the V8 Supercar Championship.

Dane is excited at working with a company that is (again) oozing enthusiasm for racing rather than the "mausoleum" he encountered on the other side of Melbourne at Ford's Broadmeadows headquarters.

In all of this Holden gets back V8 Supercar's most popular driver, Craig Lowndes, for effectively nothing, after Ford shelled out $5 million (over five years) to woo him nine years ago.

Lowndes wasn't at today's announcement because, unlike Dane and Whincup, he is still under contract to Ford.

But Whincup was there, talking of his hopes of winning another national title with Holden next year -- which could be his third if he claims his second this year in Team Vodafone's "Hogster" (a Falcon without a Blue Oval badge after Ford decided to contribute financially only to Ford Performance Racing and Stone Brothers Racing this year).

"This (switch) is a fantastic step forward," said Whincup, confident that Team Vodafone can bring its supporter base as well as its winning ways to the Lion camp.

Dane admitted that Triple Eight had been working on its Holden engineering project "for quite a while".

He said that Triple Eight, apart from building customer race cars, was already a supplier to all but two V8 Supercar teams (Ford and Holden) -- and that he saw that continuing.

But, while it is willing to assist existing customer teams including Jim Beam/Dick Johnson Racing, it will no longer build Falcons for anyone.

All Triple Eight's development focus will be on Holdens.

Inevitably there are going to be some losers out of this -- lesser teams that have enjoyed Holden's financial support -- but all the portents are that this is a great deal for Holden.

Its American parent is a long way from being out of the woods yet, and Holden is still just either side of break-even at the minute, but by recruiting Team Vodafone it's just kicked a massive goal in motorsport.

Read the latest Carsales Network news and reviews on your mobile, iPhone or PDA at www.carsales.mobi