KGR shelves Bathurst wildcard plan
Kelly Grove Racing has shelved a short-lived plan to run a wildcard Supercars entry later this season.
The Ford squad is currently building a new Mustang for Andre Heimgartner, which will make its debut later this season.
The promise of the extra set of wheels prompted the team to seriously discuss a wildcard programme for later this season, likely as a third entry for the Bathurst 1000.
However the team has since opted to shelve that plan and focus on its primary entries for David Reynolds and Heimgartner.
"I was asked about [a wildcard] a few times towards the end of last year by people wanting to run with us," team co-owner Todd Kelly told Motorsport.com.
"But at that point I didn't have a car and I didn't really plan on finishing another car.
"We have a brand new bare Mustang shell and we've been stockpiling all of the spares, and we're at a point now where it's not a massive investment to finish that car off.
"So I thought it would be good to give Andre a new car. And it's better to spend that bit to get it finished, because if we go to Gen3 the shell won't be worth much but a complete car will be.
"So we decided to press on and finish that. The guys are working on it bit-by-bit at the moment.
"Anyway we thought if we had that new car, and Andre was in it before Bathurst, we might be able to run a wildcard [with his current car].
"We through some ideas around with drivers, but it didn't get much further than that. But we did speak about it."
The Supercars wildcard system allows teams to field one-off entries without the commitment of a Racing Entitlements Contract.
The Bathurst 1000 is a popular event for wildcards, some examples including the Triple Eight entry for Mattias Ekstrom/Andy Priaulx in 2013 and the Supergirls entry for Simona de Silvestro and Renee Gracie that ran in 2015 and 2016.
Garry Rogers Motorsport ran a wildcard for Jayden Ojeda and Taylor Everingham at Bathurst last year, while T8 has already confirmed an entry for Russell Ingall and Broc Feeney this year.
There are two wildcards in the field for this weekend's round at The Bend, Thomas Randle (Tickford Racing) and Kurt Kostecki (Walkinshaw Andretti United), as part of individual three-round deals that also include Darwin and Perth later in the season.
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