Event date: 12 December 2023

On Tuesday 12 December, we set off to where Blanchard racing team have prepared their cars since 2021.

For first looks we were taken to the RJ Racer Industries, we were all sent round the back to have a look at the new Gen3 cars. The first car that came into sight for most of us was Arron Love’s Super2 Mustang.

As we all gathered around their three cars my first thoughts of many were “Why is there a Tickford car in with two Blanchard cars?”.

The reason was that for 2024 Blanchard had picked up the deal with Tickford to supply them parts for one of their cars and also was because that for 2024 James Courtney would race in one of the two cars in 24.

As the other two cars sat there in their glory, we relaised that one of the cars was the car that only completed one race, being the Bathurst 1000 and the other being the full-time car.

John Blanchard, the CEO of Blanchard Racing came and gave us all the information, like that the new GEN3 cars had been a huge surprise and that they only had just 6 weeks to make the car. Mechanics upon many mechanics slept on the factory floor just so that they could have a car.

As John gave the newly crowned champion of E30 racing for 2023, Royce Lyne, the chance to sit in the Tickford car, he said “The feeling of the car is nice, but it would be hard to do a pitstop in under a minute with a Hans device and a helmet’.

When we went to the Love’s car Royce was easily able to reach the pedals. When I hopped into the Super2 car I was able to reach the pedals which was a surprise. Once I hopped into the GEN3 car that felt big.

As we looked at their database, we were able to find out that in Adelaide, Hazlewood had no radio so they came up with a way to communicate with him through headlights and other means.

We were all given giftbags and we proceeded our way back to RJ Racer Industries to look at their products. There were some great products but we weren’t able to buy anything.

This concludes my summary of the BMW Drivers Club Melbourne trip to CoolDrive BRT.  

Mitchell Bergman | Member #890
BMW Drivers Club Melbourne