Walkinshaw Andretti Supercars deal sealed in less than two hours

Michael Andretti has revealed that his recently-announced deal to team up with Walkinshaw Racing in Australia's Supercars series came about within two hours of both sides meeting for the first time.

Andretti Autosport and Zak Brown's United Autosports outfit have joined forces with Walkinshaw Racing for 2018 to create Walkinshaw Andretti United in a bid to move the floundering team back to the front of the field.

Brown, who recently bought the team's 2011 Bathurst 1000-winning Holden Commodore, put Andretti in touch with the Aussie team's owner Ryan Walkinshaw, and both sides put together a deal quickly.

"Zak Knows that I’m constantly looking for new opportunities, he knew Ryan Walkinshaw and he called me and said ‘you need to talk to Ryan, he wants to talk about Supercars’," recalled Andretti. "So then Ryan came to our shop a week later and after the first half hour I knew we were going to do a deal and in two hours we had a deal done."

"It was one of those deals that just seemed to make sense for both sides so I’m very excited about it," he added. "And then to bring Zak onboard, after all this is going down Zak said ‘what do you think about me getting involved?’ and I’m like ‘that’d be awesome’ so then that just came about just like that in the end."

Walkinshaw Racing hasn't won a race since last season's Sandown 500, and their last championship triumph came in 2009 when they won the teams' title. Their last drivers' was even further back in 2007 with Garth Tander, but despite the lengthy barren run, Andretti believes the team have a good foundation to build up from.

"I think they’ve got a great team already down there, they just needed a little help to get a little more speed out of the cars which hopefully we’re going to be able to help them do that," he said.

Andretti won't be the first IndyCar team owner to invest in a Supercars team. Roger Penske bought into Dick Johnson Racing in 2014, renaming the team DJR Team Penske, and Andretti said that his rival's move down under was one of the reasons he decided to pursue an expansion into Supercars.

"That’s one of the reasons why I started to get involved," he said. "I knew V8s because we raced in Surfers Paradise for many years and they were always the support event, and when I went down there I’ve got to tell you I was a little impressed with the level of expertise in the series, it’s very, very high level." 

"But anyway, it’s just great for our brand, to get it out there internationally; in Australia there’s a lot of great fans and followers of all our racing so it just made sense," added.

DJR Team Penske are looking set to claim a first title this season, with drivers Fabian Coulthard and Scott McLaughlin sitting second and third in the drivers championship, despite a penalty for the former, and the team heading the teams' championship. It's only the third full season of their partnership, but Andretti feels the Walkinshaw Andretti United deal may take time to gain results.

"It took him a few years, it didn’t happen overnight," he insisted. We’re not going over with the illusion like we’re gonna change it like that, even though the did finish second [at Bathurst] so we’re taking credit for that!" 

"I think there’s some low-hanging fruit that we can help them on to get it better but I think the big stuff is going to be years down the road," Andretti admitted. "[There’s] programmes that we’ve got to put in place that will hopefully eventually show up on the race track."

Walkinshaw Andretti United are currently looking to bring a new manufacturer to Supercars. This year the team has ran privateer Holdens after losing the works backing of the Australian manufacturer at the end of last year.

Andretti Autosport already works with three other manufacturers (Honda, Volkswagen, and BMW) in various other series, and Andretti insists that there would be no conflicts if a fourth marque was to join the stable.

"They definitely know, and we definitely have a Chinese wall built around every programme so there’s no sharing across in terms of anything like technology that could hurt any of the others and we assure them of that," Andretti explained. "I think our history has shown that, and we have a great relationship with everyone that we’re involved with so it’s just that each programme is a different programme." 

"There are some cross-over things that help both, for me it helps because of overhead, to have things like different programmes instead of one programme paying for everything so you can spread that out but it hasn’t been a problem."

Images: Mobil 1 HSV Racing (Facebook)