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  Dane said he was happy with the 14-second driver change between current champion and points leader Jamie Whincup and four-time Bathurst winner Craig Lowndes.

V8 Supercar championship winners Triple Eight Race Engineering has formed a technical alliance with Paul Morris Racing...

...to produce Holden race cars in time for next year’s season starting in early February. It follows the recent decision by Triple Eight’s TeamVodafone to switch from Ford next season.

Team principal Roland Dane said yesterday’s announcement “formalised informal arrangements” over the past few months in which they had performed chassis work for Paul Morris Racing in return for engine development.

Dane said they would have race cars built in time despite the early start to next season. “We can breathe and chew gum at the same time, you know,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do with the switch (to Holden) but this arrangement will help because it’s a two-way street.”

The announcement coincided with Paul Morris Racing’s lead driver, Russell Ingall, re-signing with the team for two years. “I can start sleeping again now because I thought I would have to get a real job for a while,” the oldest driver in the field said.

The 45-year-old, two-time Bathurst winner and 2005 V8 Supercars champion said he had another Bathurst win and championship in him. “People think as you get older you get slower, but I don’t think I’m getting any dumber and it pays to drive with a bit of sense.” Meanwhile, the Triple Eight team lit the wick yesterday on its campaign for four Bathurst titles in a row with an intense pitstop practice at Queensland Raceway.

Dane said he was happy with the 14-second driver change between current champion and points leader Jamie Whincup and four-time Bathurst winner Craig Lowndes. “With these stops, it’s not just about speed, it’s about consistency,” he said. The drivers will race Lowndes’s 888 car and use his race engineer, Jeromy Moore, for the endurance rounds at Phillip Island next week and Bathurst next month.

Moore said yesterday he was happy with yesterday’s testing, although there was little experimentation they could do on car set-up as the Ipswich track was so different from Phillip Island. The team’s 88 car will be driven by two-time British touring car champion James Thompson of the UK and Allan Simonsen of Denmark. Dane said the overseas drivers’ changes needed some work as Thompson had never done them before.